I don't recommend purchasing Obamas books, but checking them out from the public library and verifying the quotes. This is a dangerous individual that has not been truthful, evidently with very much he has uttered in public. Particularly the last quote!
This man wants to be our President and control our government. Below are a few lines from Obama's books:
From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.'
From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.'
From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Is Barrack Hussein Obama a Muslim or is He Just a Racist?
Anyone who attended The Trinity "We Hate Whitey" Church and was able to sit through 20 years of "God Damn America" and "The U.S. of K.K.K. A" probably does not embrace the ideals of the USA or of Jesus Christ. Black Liberation Theology and specifically the writings of James Cone Phd. state things like "if god is not for us and against the white people then he is a murderer and we had better kill him" (from his book Black Theology and Black Power)I doubt those are ideals that anyone embraces in a progressive nation like our own. How long must we all marinate in the angry resentment of black people?
I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than charles manson. Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in GodImagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice." and his own grandmother "a typical white person"
I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.."Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up."
Wait a cotton picking minute... at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in the late 70's it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race. Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education,and in hiring
But is Barrack Hussein Obama a Muslim ...or at least born a muslim and raised through his formative years as one?? Consider these facts from the ultra liberal NYT: The Times sent a reporter to Jakarta to investigate Obama's childhood years there, and published an article on March 16 that included these details:
A close boyhood friend of Obama, Zulfin Adi, said Barack "was a Muslim. He went to the mosque."
Obama's first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, Israella Dharmawan, said: "Barry (Barack's nickname) was Muslim.
He was registered as a Muslim because his father was Muslim."
In the third grade, Obama transferred to a public school, where he was also registered as a Muslim. At the school, Muslim students attended weekly religion lessons about Islam.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
and most troubling in my opinion is that one of the concerns being expressed regarding Obama's ties involves his connections to Kenyan political opposition leader Raila Odinga, links documented through Obama's attendance at public rallies where he spoke on behalf of Odinga.
That's because Odinga admitted to Christian leaders in Kenya a Memorandum of Understanding circulating on the Internet is not fake, but a document Odinga signed with Muslim leaders in Kenya. According to Jack Wheeler, the author of a newsletter titled To the Point, the Memorandum of Understanding allegedly contains a pledge by Odinga to make Kenya an Islamic state by re-writing the constitution of Kenya within six months after Odinga takes office as president, to recognize the Islamic sharia as the ruling law of the land.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57363(Picture of Obama in Muslim garb- not a cartoon this time)
Lets move on...(lol) To the people who make a jokes about the no big deal fact about being "born muslim" and let me correct you. The religion I was born into, like it or not, formed who I am and what I believe in more than anything else I have learned or read since. Barrack Hussein Obama ...the man with not one ...not two... but three muslim names was born into a muslim family...period in the muslim faith women and their opinions or beliefs are not respected or followed.
Barrack Hussein Obama's ongoing ties to The Trinity Church of I Hate White People" where he was able to hear the nation of Israel denounced and was able to read snippets in the church bulletin from the militant Hamas Leaders. And don't even get me started on the meaning of his ties, through Wright, to the King of all America and white people haters ...Louis Farrakhan ...you know from the Nation of Islam! whom Wright broke US Law to travel with over to see their good friend Momar Khaddafi in Libya. Connect the dots people ...then throw in the large picture of Che Guevera in his office and you get a very angry ...very racist... muslim sympathizer (if not a closet muslim) and I am sorry people this man does not pass presidential muster and the thought that he might doesn't pass the straight face test ...don't doom america to 4 years of this racist as a knee jerk reaction to your hatred of President Bush ...you will be cutting off all of our noses to spite your face.
I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than charles manson. Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in GodImagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice." and his own grandmother "a typical white person"
I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.."Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up."
Wait a cotton picking minute... at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in the late 70's it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race. Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education,and in hiring
But is Barrack Hussein Obama a Muslim ...or at least born a muslim and raised through his formative years as one?? Consider these facts from the ultra liberal NYT: The Times sent a reporter to Jakarta to investigate Obama's childhood years there, and published an article on March 16 that included these details:
A close boyhood friend of Obama, Zulfin Adi, said Barack "was a Muslim. He went to the mosque."
Obama's first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, Israella Dharmawan, said: "Barry (Barack's nickname) was Muslim.
He was registered as a Muslim because his father was Muslim."
In the third grade, Obama transferred to a public school, where he was also registered as a Muslim. At the school, Muslim students attended weekly religion lessons about Islam.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
and most troubling in my opinion is that one of the concerns being expressed regarding Obama's ties involves his connections to Kenyan political opposition leader Raila Odinga, links documented through Obama's attendance at public rallies where he spoke on behalf of Odinga.
That's because Odinga admitted to Christian leaders in Kenya a Memorandum of Understanding circulating on the Internet is not fake, but a document Odinga signed with Muslim leaders in Kenya. According to Jack Wheeler, the author of a newsletter titled To the Point, the Memorandum of Understanding allegedly contains a pledge by Odinga to make Kenya an Islamic state by re-writing the constitution of Kenya within six months after Odinga takes office as president, to recognize the Islamic sharia as the ruling law of the land.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57363(Picture of Obama in Muslim garb- not a cartoon this time)
Lets move on...(lol) To the people who make a jokes about the no big deal fact about being "born muslim" and let me correct you. The religion I was born into, like it or not, formed who I am and what I believe in more than anything else I have learned or read since. Barrack Hussein Obama ...the man with not one ...not two... but three muslim names was born into a muslim family...period in the muslim faith women and their opinions or beliefs are not respected or followed.
Barrack Hussein Obama's ongoing ties to The Trinity Church of I Hate White People" where he was able to hear the nation of Israel denounced and was able to read snippets in the church bulletin from the militant Hamas Leaders. And don't even get me started on the meaning of his ties, through Wright, to the King of all America and white people haters ...Louis Farrakhan ...you know from the Nation of Islam! whom Wright broke US Law to travel with over to see their good friend Momar Khaddafi in Libya. Connect the dots people ...then throw in the large picture of Che Guevera in his office and you get a very angry ...very racist... muslim sympathizer (if not a closet muslim) and I am sorry people this man does not pass presidential muster and the thought that he might doesn't pass the straight face test ...don't doom america to 4 years of this racist as a knee jerk reaction to your hatred of President Bush ...you will be cutting off all of our noses to spite your face.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tales From the Front Lines...Real People's Lives Ruined !!
Mother of sex offender speaks out
http://www.khqa.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=126009
The state of Missouri has some of the strictest sex offender laws in the country. It puts tight restrictions on where sex offenders can*not* live, and how often they have to register with police.Supporters say those restrictions are necessary to keep an eye on sex offenders to keep you and your family safe. But those same laws also label all sex offenders as the same, no matter the circumstances or severity of their crimes. And that label follows the offender for the rest of his or her life.
This is a story every parent and teenager should see.
A reporter sat down with a mother of a registered sex offender who says a bad decision as a teenager left her son with life-long consequences.This story begins here at Monroe City High School with a promising teenager. He was on the basketball and football teams. Everyone they talked with says he was a good kid and popular in school. After graduation he did what many kids do, he moved away to go to college. When he was 19 and at a Kansas college, he and a roommate stopped at a gas station before a night out. That's when this seemingly promising life came to a halt.Mother Janice Holliday said, "They went to a gas station. They were going out. They ended up meeting these two girls and talked to them and got friendly. That's when it all happened. They went to the house to party, started drinking, dancing and one thing led to another. They ended up having sex. They left about 2 in the morning. Then the girls decided to leave, gave them their phone numbers and everything. "Janice Holliday's son says it wasn't until police knocked on his door that he discovered the girl wasn't 17 as he said she claimed. She actually was two months from her 16th birthday. 16 is the age of consent in Kansas.
During the trial, the jury convicted Holliday's son of indecent liberties with a child because he admitted to consensual sex with a minor. In front of a crowd of supporters from Monroe City, Holliday's son was sentenced to almost 5 years in prison.What was your initial reaction when you found out your son was being convicted?Holliday said, "I was devastated because I didn't think anything like this could ever happen to my son."Now her son has served his time and is out on parole. In Kansas where he was convicted he doesn't have to register as a sex offender. But when he tried to move back to Monroe City, he found things much different because *here* he is a sex offender.What has it been like for your son to get out of prison?Holliday said, "Well he's been very frustrated. Aggravation because he can't find housing, he can't find a job. He's in a class with people that actually rape babies. He tells me everyday, Mom, when am I going to find a house or a job? I tell him you pray to the Lord. You can't give up.
"Because of his legal status, he can't spend time with his own child without supervision and can't attend her school events without approval from the school superintendent. He also faces a lifetime of registration as a sex offender.Holliday said, "I just don't want it to happen to someone else's child. My son is a good kid. I just don't want to see another mother go through the devastation I had to go through because it's a nightmare."Holliday said, "You just got to be careful.
THE MESSAGE EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR!! AS LONG AS THERE ARE PEOPLE AMONG US WHO ARE NOT CAPABLE OR WILLING TO USE SOME SORT OF COMMON SENSE DISCRETION WHEN THEY DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO PROSECUTE A CRIME...NONE OF US ARE SAFE FROM THEIR PERVERTED SENSE OF JUSTICE ...AND UNTIL WE ALL STAND UP AND SAY ...STOP THE INSANITY !!!....THEN THEY WON'T !
If you're a young guy and you're dating these young girls you need to be careful because they may tell you they're one age and they're not."A warning she says every parent and teenager should listen to.Opponents of sex offender laws agree with Janice Holliday -- that it's unfair to put all sex offenders into one category, no matter their crime.
http://www.khqa.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=126009
The state of Missouri has some of the strictest sex offender laws in the country. It puts tight restrictions on where sex offenders can*not* live, and how often they have to register with police.Supporters say those restrictions are necessary to keep an eye on sex offenders to keep you and your family safe. But those same laws also label all sex offenders as the same, no matter the circumstances or severity of their crimes. And that label follows the offender for the rest of his or her life.
This is a story every parent and teenager should see.
A reporter sat down with a mother of a registered sex offender who says a bad decision as a teenager left her son with life-long consequences.This story begins here at Monroe City High School with a promising teenager. He was on the basketball and football teams. Everyone they talked with says he was a good kid and popular in school. After graduation he did what many kids do, he moved away to go to college. When he was 19 and at a Kansas college, he and a roommate stopped at a gas station before a night out. That's when this seemingly promising life came to a halt.Mother Janice Holliday said, "They went to a gas station. They were going out. They ended up meeting these two girls and talked to them and got friendly. That's when it all happened. They went to the house to party, started drinking, dancing and one thing led to another. They ended up having sex. They left about 2 in the morning. Then the girls decided to leave, gave them their phone numbers and everything. "Janice Holliday's son says it wasn't until police knocked on his door that he discovered the girl wasn't 17 as he said she claimed. She actually was two months from her 16th birthday. 16 is the age of consent in Kansas.
During the trial, the jury convicted Holliday's son of indecent liberties with a child because he admitted to consensual sex with a minor. In front of a crowd of supporters from Monroe City, Holliday's son was sentenced to almost 5 years in prison.What was your initial reaction when you found out your son was being convicted?Holliday said, "I was devastated because I didn't think anything like this could ever happen to my son."Now her son has served his time and is out on parole. In Kansas where he was convicted he doesn't have to register as a sex offender. But when he tried to move back to Monroe City, he found things much different because *here* he is a sex offender.What has it been like for your son to get out of prison?Holliday said, "Well he's been very frustrated. Aggravation because he can't find housing, he can't find a job. He's in a class with people that actually rape babies. He tells me everyday, Mom, when am I going to find a house or a job? I tell him you pray to the Lord. You can't give up.
"Because of his legal status, he can't spend time with his own child without supervision and can't attend her school events without approval from the school superintendent. He also faces a lifetime of registration as a sex offender.Holliday said, "I just don't want it to happen to someone else's child. My son is a good kid. I just don't want to see another mother go through the devastation I had to go through because it's a nightmare."Holliday said, "You just got to be careful.
THE MESSAGE EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR!! AS LONG AS THERE ARE PEOPLE AMONG US WHO ARE NOT CAPABLE OR WILLING TO USE SOME SORT OF COMMON SENSE DISCRETION WHEN THEY DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO PROSECUTE A CRIME...NONE OF US ARE SAFE FROM THEIR PERVERTED SENSE OF JUSTICE ...AND UNTIL WE ALL STAND UP AND SAY ...STOP THE INSANITY !!!....THEN THEY WON'T !
If you're a young guy and you're dating these young girls you need to be careful because they may tell you they're one age and they're not."A warning she says every parent and teenager should listen to.Opponents of sex offender laws agree with Janice Holliday -- that it's unfair to put all sex offenders into one category, no matter their crime.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
BE AFRAID PEOPLE ....BE VERY AFRAID!!
Be Afraid ...Be Very Afraid!!
People we have gotten to the point where we have so many ridiculous laws on the books that just going through your everyday routine will find you in violation of one of them if there happens to be someone there watching. With camera's stationed all over town to take full advantage of your every little slip up and computers automatically printing out tickets like a casino to feed the systems lust for more money ...more power...less privacy ...
I was recently lucky (or unlucky) enough to sit as foreman on the grand jury for two full days each week for about 6 weeks. I got to play ring leader to the circus we call our criminal justice system. This system's caretakers are the DA's and the police who feed them, and while I have nothing bad to say about any of them individually...in fact by and large they were all very hardworking professionals…but folks they think differently than the rest of us do …seriously …they do ….a lot differently! What do I mean by think differently…I mean they see themselves (police ) as both law enforcement, judge and jury. They have very selective hearing and very selective memories designed to tighten the nooses around the necks of the innocent until proven guilty perps! As they will put the boot and the leather to your civil rights in a New York minute if they think you might be guilty of something or anything and once they have determined your guilt they then will change their stories and rewrite the whole script including what you said to them and what it meant etc. to put that rope on your neck.
You may think ..”I could care less as long as they put the bad guys behind bars”. The common slang term used for this revision of history is called “testi-lying” Cops do it, prosecutors let them and judges allow it and every single day people here in Oregon and all over the US go to jail based upon the court’s, and the jury’s reliance on it. Let me stop beating around the bush …Cops Lie! And they do it very well and they have everyone’s best interest (and some ego) at heart. The reality is this is a perfect example of people in a position of power and authority over other people knowing just enough to be dangerous and it should alarm everyone because I am here to tell you that our jails are over flowing with a lot of non criminals and if the law enforcement industrial complex machine has its way …and they seem to have no problem getting it one way or another…and slowly but surely …little by little…bit by bit they are encroaching and eliminating all of the rights we hold most dear away from us.
This isn’t President Bush and his people listening in on phone calls of middle eastern terrorists and terrorist wannabe’s, this is the Beaverton or Hillsboro city police coming to the door of a single mother on public assistance and telling her that they are there to do a wellness check on her kids because someone had phoned them …anonymously …that they may be victims of abuse. If she doesn’t let them right in to toss her place “with consent” then they tell her if she doesn’t give them consent to come in then they will be back tomorrow with DHS to take her kid’s away until they have a chance to “sort this whole thing out”. Then when the frightened mother under extreme duress thinking her kids might get taken lets them in it becomes a consensual search and they are not restricted like they would be with a silly old search warrant . They demand I.D. from anyone else who may be over visiting and question them like the German Gestapo. Our most basic constitutional right to be secure in our homes against unreasonable search and seizure is a myth. And it may be the other guy today but eventually the odds will catch up to you or me or someone you know and it will be their turn to host our city’s finest while they dig through your underwear drawers with no probable cause or reasonable suspicion necessary.…all you need to have is something …like a child …that they can use to apply enough leverage to extort consent from you.
Right now we are voting on some ballot measures one of which has gotten very little press and the reason for that is because it sounds so perfectly reasonable and since everyone is anti crime and anti criminal that it will pass on its own momentum unless someone stands up and says “What?? Absolutely Not!” That measure is the one that will allow local law enforcement to share in the spoils of the civil and criminal forfeiture game. That means that not only will a basically well meaning (but dishonest ) law enforcement officer be able to shake you down wherever and whenever they want to …but if they think you may have done something they now have an additional financial incentive to ‘cook ‘ their testimony. When the government takes something from you they will do anything to not give it back …ever! Wanting to be tough on crime can be a very seductive mistress, especially when it’s not you standing up on the scaffolding with your legs and hands tied !
Once we give up these rights that we are only the caretakers of for future generations …it will be nearly impossible to get them back! Why? Because no one wants to appear to be soft on crime that’s why …anyone who does that have no political aspirations beyond the here and now. What we will have is a bunch of law enforcement personnel who have already shown that they have absolutely no regard for the law s they are hired to enforce if they think you might have something of value or you have done something that you shouldn’t have. Proof or suspicion ..not necessary! With the huge financial incentives this ballot measure would create in these misguided well meaning thugs is too much for us to even think they would not abuse it. Why wouldn’t they?
Another civil right we used to enjoy that has slowly disappeared is the right to be to be secure in our cars and person against unreasonable search and seizure. If a cop wants to search your car and you won’t give him permission all he has to do is find some reason to have your car towed …suspicion of DUII, not convinced that old tattered insurance card is really valid or if it’s out of date like so many people’s are ….he will order you out of the car …he will order your car towed…but before it leaves on its way to impound (kiss $500.00 good bye to get it back!) he is now “required’ to inventory the contents of your car” …and I mean the whole car! What’s the justification for this warrantless search? To secure any valuables that may be in it. See, they are actually trying to protect you..not violate your civil rights!
One case that came through the grand jury while I was foreman was an incident much like this one but wrapped all of the things I have mentioned in this article together into one tidy little case. The driver of a car was seen leaving an area of high drug trafficking with 3 Hispanic males with her . The Beaverton Police can’t stand it and swear that she didn’t come to a complete stop and pulled her over …whether she did or not is immaterial because they said she did. The man the DA wanted us to indict was a passenger in the car and the first person to testify was the lady who was driving…we got her story through a translator and she said that “no” she had not rolled through the light and “no” she had not consented to having her car and passengers searched and detained by the police …facts that the other jurors and I got from our questioning of the witness and not the DA. After that we heard from one of the Officer’s who was the one who she had given consent to search too and as he was finishing his very practiced and polished testi –lying I asked him again about the consent and he again told me that yes she had consented to the search as soon as she was asked and I asked him if he spoke Spanish …and he said no he did not . I asked him if he had another officer there translating for the woman (who spoke no English) and he said no. I then asked him how it was possible to gain the consent of someone who didn’t speak English ? Silence…then “well when I asked her …she said “si” and I understand that much Spanish (yes you dummy but she doesn’t understand any English…doh!)
As grand jurors our just was not to concern ourselves with trying to figure out if the search was any good or not …our job was only to decide whether or not there was enough to indict the person and I only use this example to highlight the point I have been trying to make. Once law enforcement thinks you may be guilty of something they will then fit the crime to the suspect they believe has done something instead of looking at the crime and then looking for the suspect, and that includes the total disregard for your civil rights along with selective hearing and a very selective memory.
I will discuss how the domestic violence industry has made it illegal to be a man in Oregon in my next installment…and if you don’t think the pendulum has swung back way too far the other way and if you don’t think the non victims of domestic violence (women) are not using this powerful tool to manipulate well intentioned Judge’s to do their dirty work and to gain the upper hand in most custody disputed and in family court then prepare yourself to have your skirt blown up.
Folks in case you haven’t been paying attention …we don’t try cases anymore …the prosecutor over charges the suspect …scares the shit out of him …then they negotiate a conviction. Demand your right to a trial and to have the charges against you proven? If you do and lose you get double the prison time and no one in their right mind would want to leave their fate up to a jury in this day in age especially for a sex type crime.
People we have gotten to the point where we have so many ridiculous laws on the books that just going through your everyday routine will find you in violation of one of them if there happens to be someone there watching. With camera's stationed all over town to take full advantage of your every little slip up and computers automatically printing out tickets like a casino to feed the systems lust for more money ...more power...less privacy ...
I was recently lucky (or unlucky) enough to sit as foreman on the grand jury for two full days each week for about 6 weeks. I got to play ring leader to the circus we call our criminal justice system. This system's caretakers are the DA's and the police who feed them, and while I have nothing bad to say about any of them individually...in fact by and large they were all very hardworking professionals…but folks they think differently than the rest of us do …seriously …they do ….a lot differently! What do I mean by think differently…I mean they see themselves (police ) as both law enforcement, judge and jury. They have very selective hearing and very selective memories designed to tighten the nooses around the necks of the innocent until proven guilty perps! As they will put the boot and the leather to your civil rights in a New York minute if they think you might be guilty of something or anything and once they have determined your guilt they then will change their stories and rewrite the whole script including what you said to them and what it meant etc. to put that rope on your neck.
You may think ..”I could care less as long as they put the bad guys behind bars”. The common slang term used for this revision of history is called “testi-lying” Cops do it, prosecutors let them and judges allow it and every single day people here in Oregon and all over the US go to jail based upon the court’s, and the jury’s reliance on it. Let me stop beating around the bush …Cops Lie! And they do it very well and they have everyone’s best interest (and some ego) at heart. The reality is this is a perfect example of people in a position of power and authority over other people knowing just enough to be dangerous and it should alarm everyone because I am here to tell you that our jails are over flowing with a lot of non criminals and if the law enforcement industrial complex machine has its way …and they seem to have no problem getting it one way or another…and slowly but surely …little by little…bit by bit they are encroaching and eliminating all of the rights we hold most dear away from us.
This isn’t President Bush and his people listening in on phone calls of middle eastern terrorists and terrorist wannabe’s, this is the Beaverton or Hillsboro city police coming to the door of a single mother on public assistance and telling her that they are there to do a wellness check on her kids because someone had phoned them …anonymously …that they may be victims of abuse. If she doesn’t let them right in to toss her place “with consent” then they tell her if she doesn’t give them consent to come in then they will be back tomorrow with DHS to take her kid’s away until they have a chance to “sort this whole thing out”. Then when the frightened mother under extreme duress thinking her kids might get taken lets them in it becomes a consensual search and they are not restricted like they would be with a silly old search warrant . They demand I.D. from anyone else who may be over visiting and question them like the German Gestapo. Our most basic constitutional right to be secure in our homes against unreasonable search and seizure is a myth. And it may be the other guy today but eventually the odds will catch up to you or me or someone you know and it will be their turn to host our city’s finest while they dig through your underwear drawers with no probable cause or reasonable suspicion necessary.…all you need to have is something …like a child …that they can use to apply enough leverage to extort consent from you.
Right now we are voting on some ballot measures one of which has gotten very little press and the reason for that is because it sounds so perfectly reasonable and since everyone is anti crime and anti criminal that it will pass on its own momentum unless someone stands up and says “What?? Absolutely Not!” That measure is the one that will allow local law enforcement to share in the spoils of the civil and criminal forfeiture game. That means that not only will a basically well meaning (but dishonest ) law enforcement officer be able to shake you down wherever and whenever they want to …but if they think you may have done something they now have an additional financial incentive to ‘cook ‘ their testimony. When the government takes something from you they will do anything to not give it back …ever! Wanting to be tough on crime can be a very seductive mistress, especially when it’s not you standing up on the scaffolding with your legs and hands tied !
Once we give up these rights that we are only the caretakers of for future generations …it will be nearly impossible to get them back! Why? Because no one wants to appear to be soft on crime that’s why …anyone who does that have no political aspirations beyond the here and now. What we will have is a bunch of law enforcement personnel who have already shown that they have absolutely no regard for the law s they are hired to enforce if they think you might have something of value or you have done something that you shouldn’t have. Proof or suspicion ..not necessary! With the huge financial incentives this ballot measure would create in these misguided well meaning thugs is too much for us to even think they would not abuse it. Why wouldn’t they?
Another civil right we used to enjoy that has slowly disappeared is the right to be to be secure in our cars and person against unreasonable search and seizure. If a cop wants to search your car and you won’t give him permission all he has to do is find some reason to have your car towed …suspicion of DUII, not convinced that old tattered insurance card is really valid or if it’s out of date like so many people’s are ….he will order you out of the car …he will order your car towed…but before it leaves on its way to impound (kiss $500.00 good bye to get it back!) he is now “required’ to inventory the contents of your car” …and I mean the whole car! What’s the justification for this warrantless search? To secure any valuables that may be in it. See, they are actually trying to protect you..not violate your civil rights!
One case that came through the grand jury while I was foreman was an incident much like this one but wrapped all of the things I have mentioned in this article together into one tidy little case. The driver of a car was seen leaving an area of high drug trafficking with 3 Hispanic males with her . The Beaverton Police can’t stand it and swear that she didn’t come to a complete stop and pulled her over …whether she did or not is immaterial because they said she did. The man the DA wanted us to indict was a passenger in the car and the first person to testify was the lady who was driving…we got her story through a translator and she said that “no” she had not rolled through the light and “no” she had not consented to having her car and passengers searched and detained by the police …facts that the other jurors and I got from our questioning of the witness and not the DA. After that we heard from one of the Officer’s who was the one who she had given consent to search too and as he was finishing his very practiced and polished testi –lying I asked him again about the consent and he again told me that yes she had consented to the search as soon as she was asked and I asked him if he spoke Spanish …and he said no he did not . I asked him if he had another officer there translating for the woman (who spoke no English) and he said no. I then asked him how it was possible to gain the consent of someone who didn’t speak English ? Silence…then “well when I asked her …she said “si” and I understand that much Spanish (yes you dummy but she doesn’t understand any English…doh!)
As grand jurors our just was not to concern ourselves with trying to figure out if the search was any good or not …our job was only to decide whether or not there was enough to indict the person and I only use this example to highlight the point I have been trying to make. Once law enforcement thinks you may be guilty of something they will then fit the crime to the suspect they believe has done something instead of looking at the crime and then looking for the suspect, and that includes the total disregard for your civil rights along with selective hearing and a very selective memory.
I will discuss how the domestic violence industry has made it illegal to be a man in Oregon in my next installment…and if you don’t think the pendulum has swung back way too far the other way and if you don’t think the non victims of domestic violence (women) are not using this powerful tool to manipulate well intentioned Judge’s to do their dirty work and to gain the upper hand in most custody disputed and in family court then prepare yourself to have your skirt blown up.
Folks in case you haven’t been paying attention …we don’t try cases anymore …the prosecutor over charges the suspect …scares the shit out of him …then they negotiate a conviction. Demand your right to a trial and to have the charges against you proven? If you do and lose you get double the prison time and no one in their right mind would want to leave their fate up to a jury in this day in age especially for a sex type crime.
HERE IS HOW TO STOP A TOTALITARIAN GOV'T FROM COMING TO BE
Here’s a simple rule for preventing totalitarian rule in any nation: Don’t build the systems for monitoring people’s daily lives closely in the first place, and you will not be at risk of totalitarian rulers using those systems to overwhelm individual choice. The Wall Street Journal recently did a long piece on the various ways that the National Security Agency has expanded its ability to monitor individuals within the United States without a warrant. It’s a must-read, whether you think we need this kind of police agency or not.
Originally set up by President Truman to facilitate signals intelligence (wiretapping, radio monitoring and so forth) conducted against foreign governments, the NSA today can gain access to your personal communications without any need to ask permission, including:
Originally set up by President Truman to facilitate signals intelligence (wiretapping, radio monitoring and so forth) conducted against foreign governments, the NSA today can gain access to your personal communications without any need to ask permission, including:
Email, such as the to- and from-addresses, subject line content and time sent;
Web sites visited and the content of your searches;
Wireless calling, from your location and that of the person receiving the call to the length and account numbers;
Wired phone calling, including account numbers and length of call (there have been rumors for years that the first minute of calls are monitored for keywords, but this is not confirmed, because, as a national security matter, citizens aren’t supposed to know);
Financial transactions, such as your credit card use, wire transfers and deposits and withdrawals on your checking and savings accounts,
as well as the content of any transaction recorded by a computer that the NSA deems necessary for its pattern recognition analyses.
The NSA has always insisted it works scrupulously within the limits of the laws governing its behavior, but it has, like all human institutions, had lapses in its judgment. For example, during the year immediately after 9/11, NSA attempted to set up a Total Information Awareness network, which was meant to grab all data about people and their transactions and communication for analysis, but Congress prohibited any further spending on the program over civil liberties concerns. Nevertheless, the program has continued in pieces that, in total, add up to the same level of access to domestic civilian communications, as the Journal article makes clear.
Technologists must be aware of this ever-expanding net that can trap and hold their customers’ and colleagues’ data, because it is reshaping the potential for public discourse about what our country and government can and should do, as well as how we may act as individuals.
Sure, there will be commenters on this posting who write that “it’s nothing to worry about if you don’t do anything wrong.” And that may be true, but the problem with these institutions is that they will not go away when the threat of terrorism passes. Maybe you think that threat will never end, but then we must ask whether this approach to fighting terrorism has any merit. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that terrorism can be handled within the scope of normal police activity, as it has been since before 9/11.
Human sources of information are known to be far more valuable than data-driven analysis of massive amounts of transactional data. Yes, after an agency has a human source those data analyses can be very useful in assembling a case, though it is perfectly reasonable and very easy to get a warrant from a judge for that information based on the human source—there is no need for unbridled warrantless monitoring of the people of the United States.
You see, if we assume that most of us are law-abiding citizens, the need for unrestricted monitoring is obliterated by the logic of focused pursuit of known and suspected bad guys based on established legal procedures. Warrants before monitoring is more efficient, faster and not just an ACLU talking point, but the very foundation of limited government.
If we allow our nation to be shot through with monitoring systems, we’ll be monitored forever, because people and institutions that have been granted power seldom give it up, as we all know. They even fall prey to the temptation to abuse those powers. In Cincinnati back in the late 1980s, the power to use wiretaps overcame the good judgment of police officers who used them to listen to their spouses’ conversations and to conduct surveillance on businesses. During the 1970s, the abuse of national surveillance powers was so rife that Congress established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a system of courts for providing law enforcement legal access to communications with a warrant. Today, the FISA system is under attack by those who believe we need unrestricted surveillance of Americans, as well as of potential terrorists abroad.
The trajectory of the NSA’s existence is the proof we face a serious threat to our ability to live and decide for ourselves. An agency originally chartered to monitor the communications of “foreign governments” is now monitoring individual American citizens. It is a classic case of over-reaching by government.
The NSA has worked around the decision of Congress to build its total awareness network. It is time the people made fighting that unrestricted access to their lives a campaign issue. If we don’t stop the vast spending on domestic surveillance today, it will bankrupt our government, morally and financially. We’ll be giving increasing power to bureaucrats to peak into our lives to ensure that we are living according to their whims, as every comprehensive system of public monitoring in history has produced in the past.
FAMOUS QUOTES FROM THE GIPPER HIMSELF
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Ronald Reagan
I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.
Ronald Reagan
Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.
Ronald Reagan
Man is not free unless government is limited.
Ronald Reagan
Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Ronald Reagan
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
Ronald Reagan
I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts
Ronald Reagan
Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
Ronald Reagan
"We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "We the people" are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free.
Ronald Reagan
THE SAD SAD STATISTICS OF A SYSTEM THAT IS BROKEN
Inmates By Security Level
Minimum: 18.7 %
Low: 39.4 %
Medium: 25.5 %
High: 10.4 %
Unclassified1: 5.8 %
Inmates By Gender
Inmates By Gender
Male: 168,977 (93.2 %)
Female: 12,290 (6.8 %)
Inmates By Race
White: 102,681 (56.6 %)
Black: 72,530 (40.0 %)
Native American: 3,136 (1.7 %)
Asian: 2,920 (1.6 %)
EthnicityHispanic: 58,287 (32.2 %)
Inmate Age
Female: 12,290 (6.8 %)
Inmates By Race
White: 102,681 (56.6 %)
Black: 72,530 (40.0 %)
Native American: 3,136 (1.7 %)
Asian: 2,920 (1.6 %)
EthnicityHispanic: 58,287 (32.2 %)
Inmate Age
Average Inmate Age: 37
Citizenship
United States: 129,442 (71.4 %)
Mexico: 31,143 (17.2 %)
Colombia: 3,484 (1.9 %)
Cuba: 1,969 (1.1 %)
Dominican Republic: 3,489 (1.9 %)
Other/Unknown: 11,740 (6.5 %)
Sentence Imposed
Less than 1 year: 3,325 (2.0 %)
1-3 years: 23,441 (14.2 %)
3-5 years: 26,551 (16.1 %)
5-10 years: 47,627 (28.9 %)
10-15 years: 29,281 (17.8 %)
15-20 years: 13,969 (8.5 %)
More than 20 years: 15,046 (9.1 %)
Life: 5,294 (3.2 %)
Death1: 31
Mexico: 31,143 (17.2 %)
Colombia: 3,484 (1.9 %)
Cuba: 1,969 (1.1 %)
Dominican Republic: 3,489 (1.9 %)
Other/Unknown: 11,740 (6.5 %)
Sentence Imposed
Less than 1 year: 3,325 (2.0 %)
1-3 years: 23,441 (14.2 %)
3-5 years: 26,551 (16.1 %)
5-10 years: 47,627 (28.9 %)
10-15 years: 29,281 (17.8 %)
15-20 years: 13,969 (8.5 %)
More than 20 years: 15,046 (9.1 %)
Life: 5,294 (3.2 %)
Death1: 31
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INDUSTRY - THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG OR JUST ALL OUT WAR ON MEN?
What better way to introduce such a profoundly unfair and life ruining topic than with this "Confession of a Family Law Reform Activist" by one of my new favorite bloggers/webmistresses who has been relatively quiet since she put up her website about 3 years ago ...The entire website (it's not long) is must reading for any married man especially if you have children Attorney Lisa Scott of Washington State....Her website is satire at it's finest and most tragic level. Check it out here http://realfamilylaw.com
When I graduated from law school in 1987, the Parenting Act had just been passed by the Washington State Legislature. I began practicing family law shortly thereafter, under the new law. The Parenting Act introduced a comprehensive new way to address disputes between divorcing parents over their children. It replaced the terms "custody" and "visitation" with a detailed "parenting plan" addressing residential time, decision-making and dispute resolution. The Parenting Act was supposed to be the end of custody battles between parents. They were supposed to work things out, for the best interests of their children.Well, apparently, a whole lot of divorcing parents didn't get the memo. Within a few years of beginning practice, I had been involved in numerous custody battles. Not just disagreements between spouses, but knock-down, drag-out custody wars with all the trappings: allegations of child abuse, neglect, drug abuse, alcoholism, mental problems, and that 800-pound gorilla of them all: domestic violence.Virtually every time I represented a father in a parenting case, he was accused of abuse. I began to anticipate the dreaded "crimes list," that litany of alleged wrongs committed by my client against the wife and children, beginning with "he kicked me in the stomach while I was pregnant" (15 years ago) culminating with "his abuse is escalating," "I'm fearful for my safety," and of course, "he's inappropriately touching the children." It's as though these allegations were produced by the same scriptwriter, since so many of the buzzwords were repeated over and over.As I would learn later, they often were produced by the same writers, the "battered women's advocates," who appeared to be taking a few extreme cases of domestic violence and applying them across the board.
Men who physically battered their wives started by verbally battering them, so in their twisted logic, every man who verbally "abused" his spouse necessarily must be physically battering her too. Women who wanted an easy way of out a marriage, and to assure custody of the children, eagerly signed up for "victim's benefits." All the woman had to do was say she was abused, and the domestic violence advocates eagerly welcomed a new customer. Never mind that the wife was playing fast and loose with the real facts: she was routinely abusing the husband and children, had mental or substance abuse issues, and/or was having affairs with everyone from the milkman to the soccer coach.It became clear to me that the Parenting Act had been hijacked by the domestic violence industry.
The good intentions of the Act's progenitors had been overcome by single-issue extremists. Every factor determining the children's residential time with each parent could be trumped by one nearly irrefutable claim: domestic violence. And even if domestic violence were not determinative, fathers were still losing. The Parenting Act, although written in gender-neutral terms, was usually being interpreted to favor mothers receiving primary residential care, even when both parents were substantially equally involved in parenting.
After several years of custody battles and beat-dead dads as clients, I decided I had to do something. In 1998, I co-founded a reform group called TABS: Taking Action against Bias in the System. TABS' goals were to eliminate gender bias in the family law and domestic violence system, promote shared parenting rights and responsibilities, and reduce the incidence of ugly divorce and custody battles.Over the past few years, we have supported shared parenting and friendly parenting bills in the state legislature. Shared parenting provided that each parent was presumptively entitled to at least one-third of the residential time with the children. In the eyes of the reformists, this would avoid many of the battles over residential time by ensuring a substantial amount of time was afforded to the "non-primary residential" parent.Friendly parent would add a factor in determining residential placement of the children. So long as limiting factors (such as child abuse, neglect, mental illness, substance abuse or domestic violence) were not determinative of the schedule, the court was required to also consider "which parent is more likely to allow and encourage the child frequent and continuing contact with the other parent."Essentially, the concept is that all other factors being equal, placing the children with the parent most likely to foster the children's relationship with the other parent ensures that the children benefit from healthy post-divorce relationships with both parents. The 1999 Washington State Parenting Act Study, by Dr. Diane Lye, concluded that no particular post-divorce residential schedule was best for children, but that high parental conflict was the number one detriment. Friendly parent was promoted to encourage parental cooperation and cut down on the custody wars so often fought by divorcing parents, replete with false allegations of abuse, game-playing and dirty tricks.
Several friendly parent bills have been introduced, and different versions have passed almost unanimously by both the House and Senate. But despite being a reasonable bipartisan reform, politics has prevented it from passing both houses in the same legislative session. Some opponents of the bill portrayed it as the coming of the apocalypse. They claimed it was a stealth weapon to be used against, you guessed it, domestic violence victims, who would be forced to share parenting time with their abusers. Thanks to a few brave legislators who stood up against the domestic violence perpetrator lobby, the Parenting Act was saved from defilement.Other opponents claimed friendly parent would actually increase conflict between divorcing parents, resulting in parental one-upmanship, to see who could be the "friendliest" parent. With as much conflict as the system has already, why it would be bad for parents to compete over who could be the nicest, I could never figure out. One famous anecdote used against friendly parent was a mother who was judged to be "unfriendly" because she would not let her child go see the father immediately after the child had heart surgery. If the mother had a statement from the child's doctor recommending he not go anywhere, I can't understand how she could have been faulted.
Over the last six years, I have spent hundreds of hours working on family law reform issues, meeting with legislators, testifying at committee hearings, writing letters and articles, organizing events, talking to and assisting people, many on a pro bono basis. Both on a system and individual level, we have had some successes. But looking back at our efforts over the past few years, I now realize that I was naive, misdirected, and even manipulated, by the so-called family law reform movement that I so eagerly embraced. "Family Law Reform" is just a thinly-disguised front for the Father's Rights Movement. I was duped into supporting this radical agenda by greedy, controlling fathers who just wanted out of child support payments, and to further abuse their victims. I now see the error of my ways. I now see the fraud that is friendly parent. It's not about the best interests of the children, it's about selfishness and greed. If passed into law, it will require thousands of mothers of children with heart defects to be forced to send their deathly ill children to visit their insensitive fathers. Not to mention their no-good, child-abusing, domestic violence-perpetrating, non-support paying deadbeat sorry-excuse for a parent."Shared parenting" is really just a code-word for no child support. Fathers demand more time with the children only to get residential time credits, plummeting their child support payments from $800.00 per month to $49.95. Then they palm off the children, and all the costs, on the mother. Fathers complain that the child support table does not credit them for any direct financial contribution towards the children even when they have 25 per cent of the time.
However, this argument lacks any factual basis in most cases. Since when does it cost anything to live in a van down by the river?Numerous studies, interviewing both men and women, have concluded that men still don't equally share household and childcare duties. Toilet-plunging, gutter-cleaning, and spider-killing and carcass disposal, while essential household tasks, are not listed parenting functions under the Parenting Act. Oh, men may do a few things here and there, but generally they're just useful idiots, waiting for step-by-step instructions from their wives on how to do the most basic things. They're barely able to follow their wife's grocery list. Dads may take the kids to daycare, but it is the mom who researches, chooses and monitors the provider. If it weren't for mom's meticulous attention to every detail, dad would have the kids babysat by the registered sex offender down the street.Ask a dad who the kids' doctor or dentist is, and most likely he won't know. He might be able to point in the vague direction of the children's school. But ask dad for the win/loss ratio of every team in the NFL, and he'll be able to recite it flawlessly.Moms plan and prepare nutritious, balanced meals. Dads zap hot dogs in the microwave and pop open a can of cola. They don't know fabric softener from cough syrup. If you don't believe me, check out most TV commercials for household products, showing the husbands as big dummies when it comes to even the simplest task. The true nature of men: they wouldn't be able to punch themselves out of a Ziploc bag to save their lives.Dads may buy the kids clothing occasionally, but they'll let a 9-year old girl wear fishnet stockings and lipstick to Sunday school. Moms never make inappropriate wardrobe or grooming decisions, if you don't count nose, eyebrow, tongue, or body-piercing. Besides, Dads who don't let their kids jump on the bandwagon of every new fad are abusive, controlling and punitive.
The family law reform movement, i.e. father's rights, has tried to make the Parenting Act more "fair" and less "biased." But the only ones ever complaining were men, who because of the gender-neutral language of the Parenting Act, thought they had an equal shot at getting custody of their children. But the Parenting Act, with all its good intentions, can't change the basic nature of men and women. The Parenting Act recognized parenting functions as important and even anticipated that men might be able to do them once in a while. It's clear to me now, fathers just aren't qualified to parent their children without intense supervision by the mothers, or some fundamental change in the nature of men that would qualify them to be custodial parents.So, rather than continue a losing battle to reform the Parenting Act to make it more (father) friendly, I've decided that the only way to make any progress is to change the way fathers function, both before and during divorce. Everything they need to get custody of their children is right there in the Parenting Act. It's been there all along, and women have used it to the hilt for years. It's time for men to stop whining about reform, step up to the plate and show that they are just as capable of being the best parent. There's no bias in the system, just laziness and incompetence. Fathers, how can you use the existing Parenting Act to get custody of your children? Make the Parenting Act work for you. Millions of women have been happy to accept the benefits of the culture of victimization. It's almost intoxicating, being exalted, praised, and getting all the attention, but none of the blame.
ADVICE FOR MEN
Men can get these same benefits too. First, find your inner victim. Start seeing a counselor who can help you recover memories of being abused. Dig deep down into your psyche. You were abused by your parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers, coaches, family dog, cat, ferret, and now, by your spouse. Wallow in your life-long suffering. Courts love to give custody to damaged people.Discover the efficacy of pre-divorce tactics. Call 911 whenever you feel "afraid" of your spouse. Cry rape whenever she demands sex. Call your friends and family constantly and report her unrelenting abuse. You'll need their declarations in court later. Get in her face and provoke her into punching you (or just say she did; remember no evidence is required when you're the victim). Have her arrested and removed from the family home, then go get a domestic violence protection order to keep her away.Before you and your spouse separate, quit your job and go on unemployment for as long as possible. Cite job stress, nebulous medical problems, or the need to "find yourself." Then you can claim you are the "primary caretaker," assuring you can win custody over your two-job-holding wife.
Get in touch with your feminine side. Stay home all day and watch Oprah and Martha Stewart. Start talking about potpourri and decoupage. For that extra touch, start cross-dressing. Just don't take your wife's clothes. Go buy your own. No one will criticize your alternative lifestyle. Have your children start calling you "mommy." No matter what ideas your wife comes up with, or how well she does things, constantly criticize and demean her for her incompetence. Complain about how she doesn't make enough money. By the time the divorce starts, she'll be too depressed and dejected to go for custody.
Overdraw the checking account by thousands of dollars, then claim your wife is abusive and controlling when she never lets you touch the checkbook again. If you're having an affair and get caught, immediately accuse your wife of domestic violence.
Get her arrested and tossed out of the house. Then move your girlfriend in. Be sure your girlfriend uses your wife's treasured personal things and redecorates immediately. Encourage your children to start calling your live-in "mom." Go to their school and take their mother off the contact card. Tell them she is an abuser and not to let her near the children.
Go to court and get child support from your wife, based on when she was working two jobs to get the family out of the mountain of debt you helped run up. Continue to avoid employment at all costs, and spend the child support check on booze, gambling and internet auctions of collectible cabbage-patch dolls.
If your true nature does come out during this process (i.e. your intrinsic domestic violence tendencies), all is not lost. If you slap, scratch, bite, or knee your wife in the groin, use one of these sure-fire excuses to evade any consequences:"I was only defending myself from HER abuse; I'M the real victim here""She taunted me into hitting her""It didn't hurt her anyway""Lee Press-On Nails are not weapons"
Once you have obtained a protection/no-contact order against your wife, call her constantly, then report her to the police for violating the order. When you can't get red wine stains from your alcoholic binges out of the upholstery, call your wife and sweetly ask her to come over and help. After she has successfully gotten the spots out, get into an argument loud enough for the neighbors to hear, so they'll call 911 and get her arrested. When she protests that you invited her over, insist that she constantly pressures you to let her come back. Remember, you are the victim of domestic violence and can do no wrong.
And don't worry about that pesky Rule 11 or signing declarations under penalty of perjury. Blatant lying is rampant in the family courts, and never punished. Why else is it referred to as Liar's Court or the Perjury Calendar?If, after you have successfully thrown your wife out of the family home, gotten her on trumped-up domestic violence charges, and messed with her mind, she still might try to go for shared parenting. Not to worry. Ensure that shared parenting will never be allowed by sabotaging cooperation and constantly creating conflict. Oh, and be sure to blame her for it.
Even though you've spent most of the years of your marriage saying "Yes Dear" to your wife, now your stock response is No, No, No. No matter what she does, says, or wants, it's wrong. She wants more time with the children? NO. She wants to participate in their school and extracurricular activities? NO. She wants to talk to them on the telephone? NO!Be assured that accountability of the custodial parent is not part of this process.
When the children end up on drugs, pregnant or in jail by the age of 15, you still get to blame the non-custodial parent. Just repeat the mantra that if it weren't for her years of child abuse and domestic violence, the children wouldn't have turned out that way. If things get really bad, agree to sign custody over to her, but on condition that you don't have to pay child support.So, there you have it. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with the Parenting Act as it exists today. You can get anything you want. You just have to know how to use it to your advantage. Reform anyone?
"When there are no victims, there are no abusers. When there are no abusers, there are no bogeymen. When there are no bogeymen, there are no politicians drumming up hysteria that only drastic government intervention can abate. Save the Victims."
Trial by Jury?? Don't Believe It ! How About Trial by Government
Excerpt from a Book by Lysander Spoon....read it and join Lady Liberty in a good long cry
FOR more than six hundred years that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a "palladium of liberty" a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.That the rights and duties of jurors must necessarily be such as are here claimed for them, will be evident when it is considered what the trial by jury is, and what is its object.
"The trial by jury," then, is a "trial by the country" that is, by the people as distinguished from a trial by the government.It was anciently called "trial per pais" that is, "trial by the country." And now, in every criminal trial, the jury are told that the accused "has, for trial, put himself upon the country; which country you (the jury) are."The object of this trial "by the country," or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or "the country," judge of and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government's judging of and determining its own powers over the people. How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government, if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.On the other hand, any people, that judge of, and determine authoritatively for the government, what are their own liberties against the government, of course retain all the liberties they wish to enjoy. And this is freedom. At least, it is freedom to them; because, although it may be theoretically imperfect, it, nevertheless, corresponds to their highest notions of freedom.To secure this right of the people to judge of their own liberties against the government, the jurors are taken, (or must be, to make them lawful jurors,} from the body of the people, by lot, or by some process that precludes any previous knowledge, choice, or selection of them, on the part of the government.This is done to prevent the government's constituting a jury of its own partisans or friends; in other words, to prevent the government's packing a jury, with a view to maintain its own laws, and accomplish its own purposes.It is supposed that, if twelve men be taken, by lot, from the mass of the people, without the possibility of any previous knowledge, choice, or selection of them, on the part of the government, the jury will be a fair epitome of "the country" at large, and not merely of the party or faction that sustain the measures of the government; that substantially all classes of opinions, prevailing among the people, will be represented in the jury; and especially that the opponents of the government, (if the government have any opponents,) will be represented there, as well as its friends; that the classes, who are oppressed by the laws of the government, (if any are thus oppressed,) will have their representatives in the jury, as well as those classes, who take sides with the oppressor, that is, with the government.
It is fairly presumable that such a tribunal will agree to no conviction except such as substantially the whole country would agree to, if they were present, taking part in the trial. A trial by such a tribunal is, therefore, in effect, "a trial by the country." In its results it probably comes as near to a trial by the whole country, as any trial that it is practicable to have, without too great inconvenience and expense. And. as unanimity is required for a conviction, it follows that no one can be convicted, except for the violation of such laws as substantially the whole country wish to have maintained. The government can enforce none of its laws, (by punishing offenders, through the verdicts of juries,) except such as substantially the whole people wish to have enforced. The government, therefore, consistently with the trial by jury, can exercise no powers over the people, (or, what is the same thing, over the accused person, who represents the rights of the people,) except such a substantially the whole people of the country consent that it may exercise. In such a trial, therefore, "the country," or the people, judge of and determine their own liberties against the government, instead of the government's judging of and determining its own powers over the people.But all this "trial by the country" would be no trial at all "by the country," but only a trial by the government, if the government 'could either declare who may, and who may not, be jurors, or could dictate to the jury anything whatever, either of law or evidence, that is of the essence of the trial. If the government may decide who may, and who may not, be jurors, it will of course select only its partisans, and those friendly to its measures. It may not only prescribe who may, and who may not, be eligible to be drawn as jurors; but it may also question each person drawn as a juror, as to his sentiments in regard to the particular law involved in each trial, before suffering him to be sworn on the panel; and exclude him if he be found unfavorable to the maintenance of such a law.So, also, if the government may dictate to the jury what laws they are to enforce, it is no longer a " trial by the country," but a trial by the government; because the jury then try the accused, not by any standard of their own, not by their own judgments of their rightful liberties, but by a standard. dictated to them by the government. And the standard, thus dictated by the government, becomes the measure of the people's liberties. If the government dictate the standard of trial, it of course dictates the results of the trial. And such a trial is no trial by the country, but only a trial by the government; and in it the government determines what are its own powers over the people, instead of the people's determining what are their own liberties against the government. In short, if the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.The jury are also to judge whether the laws are rightly expounded to them by the court. Unless they judge on this point, they do nothing to protect their liberties against the oppressions that are capable of being practiced under cover of a corrupt exposition of the laws. If the judiciary can authoritatively dictate to a jury any exposition of the law, they can dictate to them the law itself, and such laws as they please; because laws are, in practice, one thing or another, according as they are expounded. The jury must also judge whether there really be any such law, (be it good or bad,) as the accused is charged with having transgressed. Unless they judge on this point, the people are liable to have their liberties taken from them by brute force, without any law at all.The jury must also judge of the laws of evidence. If the government can dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only shut out any evidence it pleases, tending to vindicate the accused, but it can require that any evidence whatever, that it pleases to offer, be held as conclusive proof of any offence whatever which the government chooses to allege.It is manifest, therefore, that the jury must judge of and try the whole case, and every part and parcel of the case, free of any dictation or authority on the part of the government. They must judge of the existence of the law; of the true exposition of the law; of the justice of the law; and of the admissibility and weight of all the evidence offered; otherwise the government will have everything its own way; the jury will be mere puppets in the hands of the government: and the trial will be, in reality, a trial by the government, and not a "trial by the country."
By such trials the government will determine its own powers over the people, instead of the people's determining their own liberties against the government; and it will be an entire delusion to talk, as for centuries we have done, of the trial by jury, as a "palladium of liberty," or as any protection to the people against the oppression and tyranny of the government.The question, then, between trial by jury, as thus described, and trial by the government, is simply a question between liberty and despotism. The authority to judge what are the powers of the government, and what the liberties of the people, must necessarily be vested in one or the other of the parties themselves, the government, or the people; because there is no third party to whom it can be entrusted. If the authority be vested in the government, the government is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with. If, on the other hand, that authority be vested in the people, then the people have all liberties, (as against the government,) except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) choose to disclaim; and the government can exercise no power except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) consent that it may exercise.The force and. justice of the preceding argument cannot be evaded by saying that the government is chosen by the people; that, in theory, it represents the people; that it is designed to do the will of the people; that its members are all sworn to observe the fundamental or constitutional law instituted by the people; that its acts are therefore entitled to be considered the acts of the people; and that to allow a jury, representing the people, to invalidate the acts of the' government, would therefore be arraying the people against themselves.
There are two answers to such an argument.One answer is, that, in a representative government, there is no absurdity or contradiction, nor any arraying of the people against themselves, in requiring that the statutes or enactments of the government shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws. Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive, jury, and judges; and have made it necessary that each enactment shall pass the ordeal of all these separate tribunals, before its authority can be established by the punishment of those who choose to transgress it. And there is no more absurdity or inconsistency in making a jury one of these several tribunals, than there is in making the representatives, or the senate, or the executive, or the judges, one of them. There is no more absurdity in giving a jury a veto upon the laws, than there is in giving a veto to each of these other tribunals. The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the judges.But another answer to the argument that the people are arrayed against themselves, when a jury hold an enactment of the government invalid, is, that the government, and all the departments of the government, are merely the servants and agents of the people; not invested with arbitrary or absolute authority to bind the people, but required to submit all their enactments to the judgment of a tribunal more fairly representing the whole people, before they carry them into execution, by punishing any individual for transgressing them. If the government were not thus required to submit their enactments to the judgment of "the country," before executing them upon individuals, if, in other words, the people had reserved to themselves no veto upon the acts of the government, the government, instead of being a mere servant and agent of the people, would be an absolute despot over the people. It would have all power in its own hands; because the power to punish carries all other powers with it. A power that can, of itself, and by its own authority, punish disobedience, can compel obedience and submission, and is above all responsibility for the character of its laws.
In short, it is a despotism.And it is of no consequence to inquire how a government came by this power to punish, whether by prescription, by inheritance, by usurpation. or by delegation from the people's If it have now but got it, the government is absolute.It is plain, therefore, that if the people have invested the government with power to make laws that absolutely bind the people, and to punish the people for transgressing those laws, the people have surrendered their liberties unreservedly into the hands of the government.It is of no avail to say, in answer to this view of the ease, that in surrendering their liberties into the hands of the government, the people took an oath from the government, that it would exercise its power within certain constitutional limits; for when did oaths ever restrain a government that was otherwise unrestrained? Or when did a government fail to determine that all its acts were within the constitutional and authorized limits of its power, if it were permitted to determine that question for itself?Neither is it of any avail to say, that, if the government abuse its power, and enact unjust and oppressive laws, the government may be changed by the influence of discussion, and the exercise of the right of suffrage.
Discussion can do nothing to prevent the enactment, or procure the repeal, of unjust laws, unless it be understood that, the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Be sides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the enactment of new ones that are equally so. The second body of legislators are liable and likely to be just as tyrannical as the first. If it be said that the second body may be chosen for their integrity, the answer is, that the first were chosen for that very reason, and yet proved tyrants. The second will be exposed to the same temptations as the first, and will be just as likely to prove tyrannical. Who ever heard that succeeding legislatures were, on the whole, more honest than those that preceded them? What is there in the nature of men or things to make them so? If it be said that the first body were chosen from motives of injustice, that fact proves that there is a portion of society who desire to establish injustice; and if they were powerful or artful enough to procure the election of their instruments to compose the first legislature, they will be likely to be powerful or artful enough to procure the election of the same or similar instruments to compose the second. The right of suffrage, therefore, and even a change of legislators, guarantees no change of legislation, certainly no change for the better. Even if a change for the better actually comes, too late, because it comes only after more or less injustice has been irreparably done.But, at best, the right of suffrage can be exercised only periodically; and between the periods the legislators are wholly irresponsible.
No despot was ever more entirely irresponsible than are legislators during the period for which they are chosen. They can neither, be removed from their office, nor called to account while in their office, nor punished after they leave their office, be their tyranny what it may. Moreover, the judicial and executive departments of the government are equally irresponsible to the people, and are only responsible, (by impeachment, and dependence for their salaries), to these irresponsible legislators. This dependence of the judiciary and executive upon the legislature is a guaranty that they will always sanction and execute its laws, whether just or unjust. Thus the legislators hold the whole power of the government in their hands, and are at the same time utterly irresponsible for the manner in which they use it.If, now, this government, (the three branches thus really united in one), can determine the validity of, and enforce, its own laws, it is, for the time being, entirely absolute, and wholly irresponsible to the people.But this is not all. These legislators, and this government, so irresponsible while in power, can perpetuate their power at pleasure, if they can determine what legislation is authoritative upon the people, and can enforce obedience to it, for they can not only declare their power perpetual, but they can enforce submission to all legislation that is necessary to secure its perpetuity.
They can, for example, prohibit all discussion of the rightfulness of their authority; forbid the use of the suffrage; prevent the election of any successors; disarm, plunder, imprison, and even kill all who refuse submission. If, therefore, the government (all departments united) be absolute for a day, that is, if it can, for a day, enforce obedience to its own laws, it can, in that day, secure its power for all time, like the queen, who wished to reign but for a day, but in that day caused the king, her husband, to be slain, and usurped his throne.Nor will it avail to say that such acts would be unconstitutional, and that unconstitutional acts may be lawfully resisted; for everything a government pleases to do will, of course, be determined to be constitutional, if the government itself be permitted to determine the question of the constitutionality of its own acts. Those who are capable of tyranny, are capable of perjury to sustain it.The conclusion, therefore, is, that any government, that can, for a day, enforce its own laws, without appealing to the people, (or to a tribunal fairly representing the people,) for their consent, is, in theory, an absolute government, irresponsible to the people, and can perpetuate its power at pleasure.
The trial by jury is based upon a recognition of this principle, and therefore forbids the government to execute any of its laws, by punishing violators, in any case whatever, without first getting the consent of "the country," or the people, through a jury. In this way, the people, at all times, hold their liberties in their own hands, and never surrender them, even for a moment, into the hands of the government.The trial by jury, then, gives to any and every individual the liberty, at any time, to disregard or resist any law whatever of the government, if he be willing to submit to the decision of a jury, the questions, whether the law be intrinsically just and obligatory? and whether his conduct, in disregarding or resisting it, were right in itself? And any law, which does not, in such trial, obtain the unanimous sanction of twelve men, taken at random from the people, and judging according to the standard of justice in their own minds, free from all dictation and authority of the government, may be transgressed and resisted with impunity, by whomsoever pleases to transgress or resist it.
The trial by jury authorizes all this, or it is a sham and a hoax, utterly worthless for protecting the people against oppression. If it do not authorize an individual to resist the first and least act of injustice or tyranny, on the part of the government, it does not authorize him to resist the last and the greatest. If it do not authorize individuals to nip tyranny in the bud, it does not authorize them to cut it down when its branches are filled with the ripe fruits of plunder and oppression.Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defense whatsoever against oppression. The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government. The government itself never acknowledges this right. And the right is practically established only when and because the government, no longer exists to call it in question. The right, therefore, can be exercised with impunity, only when it is exercised victoriously.
All unsuccessful attempts at revolution, however justifiable in themselves, are punished as treason, if the government be permitted to judge of the treason. The government itself never admits the injustice of its laws, as a legal defense for those who have attempted a revolution, and failed. The right of revolution, therefore, is right of no practical value, except for those who are stronger than the government. So long, therefore, as the oppressions of a government are kept within such limits as simply not to exasperate against it a power greater than its own, the right of revolution cannot be appealed to, and is therefore inapplicable to the case. This affords a wide field for tyranny; and, if a jury cannot here intervene, the oppressed are utterly defenseless.
SUPREME COURT SAYS NO TO ARIZONA V BERGER HE GETS TO DO THE 200 YEARS
In June 2002, Phoenix police arrested Berger on a state warrant charging him with sexual exploitation of a minor. Specifically, he was charged with possession of 20 photographs depicting, among other things, children being raped by adults, children engaging in sexual acts with other children, and children in sexual acts with animals. The 20 images introduced at trial were part of a large collection of pornographic images accumulated over a period of at least six years.A jury found Berger guilty on 20 counts of sexually exploiting children under the age of 15 and sentenced him to 10 years on each count, the sentences to run consecutively. Last May the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed that judgment. One justice dissented; another expressed reservations. Last month counsel filed Berger's appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. We will know by mid-November if the court will hear it.There is no question of Berger's guilt. He emerges from the record as an almost classic "dirty old man." There is no evidence that he himself ever engaged in distributing, exhibiting, receiving, selling, purchasing, electronically transmitting or even "exchanging" pornographic images, all of which the Arizona law forbids. He was convicted solely of "possessing" such images. He collected them.These facts should weigh in your calculus, for good or ill: He is 52 years old, married, a father of four, an award-winning teacher of world history. He has no criminal record of any sort. The state offered no evidence that he has ever created pornography or improperly touched a minor.In their appeal to the Supreme Court, his counsel rely upon a single argument: The unservable sentence violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment decrees that courts may not inflict "cruel and unusual punishments." The 200-year prison sentence imposed on Berger is plainly "unusual." At that punitive level, Arizona stands alone. Its minimum 10-year sentence for possession of a single piece of child pornography is greater than the maximum sentence for this offense in 35 states. It is equal to the maximum in nine others.Is the 200-year sentence also constitutionally "cruel"? Who is to say? Manifestly, the question is hypothetical, or academic. On the record, Berger is a middle-aged, dirty-minded, part-time pedophile. But also on the record, he has never physically harmed anyone. He never even bought any of this stuff. He merely downloaded it.In the Supreme Court of Arizona last May, Justice W. Scott Bales held that the sentence imposed on Berger must be affirmed unless it is "grossly disproportionate" to the crime. To answer that question, he said, judges must consider (1) the sentences imposed by Arizona on other crimes of comparable gravity, and (2) the sentences imposed by other states for the same crime, i.e., possession of pornography involving juveniles.After weighing the state's "compelling interest" in protecting children from sexual exploitation, Justice Bales voted to affirm. Justice Andrew D. Hurwitz not only concurred, he "fully" concurred — but he "reluctantly" concurred as well. If he were a legislator, he would be free to find such a long sentence "shocking to my conscience and vote for a less draconian sentencing scheme."Justice Rebecca White Berch, dissenting in part, had the last and most sensible word. She agreed that courts must defer to legislatures on the fixing of criminal sentences, but the Constitution prohibits sentences that are "grossly" disproportionate. In this instance, Arizona's sentence for possession of pornography "is by far the longest in the nation." It is more severe than sentences imposed in Arizona on first offenders for rape or aggravated assault. In the federal courts, Justice Berch observed, where sentencing guidelines are fixed by an extra-judicial commission, Berger would have faced only five years in prison. Arizona's sentences for possession of child pornography are "not merely disproportionate, but grossly disproportionate to the crime."She concluded: "I do not condone Berger's crimes. Child pornography is a serious offense. ... Nevertheless, we are asked to determine in this case whether 200 years is just punishment for a defendant who possessed child pornography but directly harmed no one. The sentence provides no opportunity for rehabilitation and provides no second chance."This is a case the high court ought to hear. Morton Berger may be a creep, but on the record he's a pretty sad creep. The sentence is absurd
http://www.cofad1.state.az.us/opinionfiles/CR/CR030243.pdf Link to the Arizona Appeals Court saying that this sentence is not cruel and unusual ...what a bunch of ninnies!
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/06-349.pdf Bergers petition for review to the Suprme Court
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/washington/27scotus.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The Supreme's turn down Berger's Petition for Review ...Supreme Fools
http://www.cofad1.state.az.us/opinionfiles/CR/CR030243.pdf Link to the Arizona Appeals Court saying that this sentence is not cruel and unusual ...what a bunch of ninnies!
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/06-349.pdf Bergers petition for review to the Suprme Court
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/washington/27scotus.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The Supreme's turn down Berger's Petition for Review ...Supreme Fools
What happens next ?? It's up to the rest of us to draw the line in the sand on this one. Do I think that Morton Berger should not be punished ?? Not at all I would venture to guess that he has been punished quite enough from the 3 years he has done already and by the notoriety this case has gotten. It's time to write a letter to the Governor of Arizona and let her know that what has happened here is over the top...bordering on ridiculous ....people this is incredible ...stop now write down this address and take the 5 minutes to drafty a quick note to tell her that as an american you are shocked by this treatment and that 200 years is absurd for a civilized nation ...he would have only gotten 20 years if he had killed a child and in three states in the US he wouldn't have been charged with a crime at all !!
CRIMES COMMITTED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT- CREATING CRIME OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL
The manufacturing of crimes by the police is a very big industry in America, but it is part of the even bigger industry of the organized crime where the police, the legal profession and the judiciary act together to defraud and criminalize innocent citizens.In a devastating indictment of the American justice system, the US writer, Paul Craig Roberts, has described some of the activities of the US police in an article titled 'How the Police Create Crimes'. We were aware that the US police were legally using child pornography to entrap men over the Internet and also posing as underage girls and boys to ensnare men into meetings where they would be arrested and, even in some cases, filmed for television programmes. Stories have also been coming in to this web site about malicious women using help from male FBI agents and police to entrap their ex-husbands and boy friends and for years we have been hearing that the security services use women (all over the world incidentally) to entrap and ruin men who may be politically undesirable to American causes. Roberts now reports that the American police are planting attractive women half naked in parks, who entice passing males, engage them in conversation, pretend to begin to seduce them and ask to see their penises. When the foolish men comply, the police with their cameras still running pounce on them in triumph.Other examples quoted by Roberts are the corrupt New York police ensnaring hundreds of innocents during 2007 via 'Operation Lucky Bag' by planting IPods, cell phones, wallets, and shopping bags in subway stations as if they had been dropped or abandoned. Pick them up and you are nicked for 'Subway grand larceny'.He gives a further example of an organized crime that is practised with ever increasing frequency also by the judiciary. A senior policeman, sheriff or judge tries to force you to sell him your property at a fraction of its value: you refuse and you become a target of the law enforcement apparatus. You are now at the mercy of a Gestapo.When Roberts sums up, however, he strikes a chord with all that we have learned about the American justice system and see now also in Great Britain and other English-speaking countries which are copying it. "In our time, the police create crimes. And that is why the US prison population is twice the size of China's, an authoritarian country with a population four to five times larger than America's."It is very important that this be grasped in its fullest implications. It is in the interest of the police and the legal profession that crime be maintained. There are two broad classes of crime - illegal crime, committed by the underdogs, mainly black males in America, and legal crime committed by the establishment, mainly the judiciary, the rest of the legal profession and the police. The legal criminals need the illegal crime to justify their own predatory roles. How often we see the 'round up the usual suspects' routine where any underdog is arrested for a crime whether he did it or not. The police get a result and the crimes which keep them and the legal profession in business continue to flourish.So where does this lead to? Roberts says, "Americans are more at risk from the police than they are from criminals." We now know of both law-abiding non-Americans and ex-Americans who are afraid to visit or return to America. Hundreds are now also leaving Great Britain every day to live abroad. The numbers of law-abiding citizens contemplating civil disobedience or even outright rejection of the authority of the state is growing. Here is one current example. If the proposed further criminalization of prostitution goes ahead in the UK, men who have never considered using prostitutes before may now begin to do so. Look at Operation Ore in the UK. One result is that it has brought together a small group of highly intelligent and often articulate and literate individuals determined to expose and punish the establishment for its abandonment of the principles of ordinary justice in its pursuit of results in the witch hunt of Ore.A final piece of good advice from Roberts: "Never make the mistake of calling the police."The full Paul Craig Roberts article can be read in Counterpunch.A general 'dumbing down' of the populationNote the power today of television and the printed media and their virtual control by a cabal. Note also how the world's most powerful owner of media is also the biggest publisher of banal pornography over adult television channels and tabloids.Some reflection on the aboveThe clear relationship between the elements that make up the police state, including the inevitable 'legislative creep' that makes it possible can be seen from the above. A key sub-element in the doctrines and dogmas is the crimen exceptum, the designated crime for which normal law and the processes of justice are suspended - heresy, witchcraft, being a Jew in Nazi Germany, child sex abuse, child porn, and so on. Note how child porn has been used to transform the Internet into a tool of repression and fear and a powerful device for the police and prosecution state. Whenever it is powerful enough fear of the enemy can replace the crimen exceptum, as the instrument for the suspension of justice.Note also how these devices were used in the early inquisitions, Nazi Germany, countries under the control of the Roman Catholic Church, and McCarthy's America, and are still being used today in Islamic fundamentalism, moral panics and social control.A critical element, which tips the state from one of democracy into a full police state, is the suppression of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is vital for avoiding the slide into totalitarianism, but it must be attacked by the opportunists and demagogues as it exposes and undermines them. The police fear it also. When not moderated by freedom of expression, the process shown above develops almost naturally into the police state, made certain by a fatal combination of public apathy and fear, and moral indoctrination and opportunism by whatever cabal is dominant. The signs that the end of the process is near are when laws are passed that suppress criticism of the law itself and when the media bow to political correctness and to the current social ideology. A test for the last is to ask if there are any questions that are taboo. Would a journalist defend a Jew in Nazi Germany? Would a journalist question the unnatural age of sexual consent laws in Western society?And for the epistemicistsA fascinating mental exercise is to take the model laid out above which begins with the existence of doctrines and dogmas, and imagine several other 'domains of meaning' or 'levels of awareness', in an imaginary world where we have moved beyond the domain of doctrines and dogmas, into one where we discard black and white labelling, a priori assumptions, and accept ambiguity.What can we do?This is addressed in the main menu on the left.The Malleus Maleficarum and the new hereticsRead also The Malleus Maleficarum and the new heretics HERE.A general 'dumbing down' of the populationNote the power today of television and the printed media and their virtual control by a cabal. Note also how the world's most powerful owner of media is also the biggest publisher of banal pornography over adult television channels and tabloids.Some reflection on the aboveThe clear relationship between the elements that make up the police state, including the inevitable 'legislative creep' that makes it possible can be seen from the above. A key sub-element in the doctrines and dogmas is the crimen exceptum, the designated crime for which normal law and the processes of justice are suspended - heresy, witchcraft, being a Jew in Nazi Germany, child sex abuse, child porn, and so on. Note how child porn has been used to transform the Internet into a tool of repression and fear and a powerful device for the police and prosecution state. Whenever it is powerful enough fear of the enemy can replace the crimen exceptum, as the instrument for the suspension of justice.Note also how these devices were used in the early inquisitions, Nazi Germany, countries under the control of the Roman Catholic Church, and McCarthy's America, and are still being used today in Islamic fundamentalism, moral panics and social control.A critical element, which tips the state from one of democracy into a full police state, is the suppression of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is vital for avoiding the slide into totalitarianism, but it must be attacked by the opportunists and demagogues as it exposes and undermines them. The police fear it also. When not moderated by freedom of expression, the process shown above develops almost naturally into the police state, made certain by a fatal combination of public apathy and fear, and moral indoctrination and opportunism by whatever cabal is dominant. The signs that the end of the process is near are when laws are passed that suppress criticism of the law itself and when the media bow to political correctness and to the current social ideology. A test for the last is to ask if there are any questions that are taboo. Would a journalist defend a Jew in Nazi Germany? Would a journalist question the unnatural age of sexual consent laws in Western society?And for the epistemicistsA fascinating mental exercise is to take the model laid out above which begins with the existence of doctrines and dogmas, and imagine several other 'domains of meaning' or 'levels of awareness', in an imaginary world where we have moved beyond the domain of doctrines and dogmas, into one where we discard black and white labelling, a priori assumptions, and accept ambiguity.What can we do?This is addressed in the main menu on the left.The Malleus Maleficarum and the new hereticsRead also The Malleus Maleficarum and the new heretics HERE.America the defence lawyers work for the judge and prosecution and engage in plea bargaining which is akin to the witch pleading guilty early on to reduce the amount of torture. Death or shaming will follow anywayThe Malleus demands simplicity in the institution of proceedings in the event of a revelation of the crimen exceptum, without the arguments and contentions of advocates and 'without the legal quibbles and contentions which are introduced in other cases'. In other words the whole procedure as with those in American and UK courts today is to ensure conviction.
WANT TO SEE A REAL LIVE CASE COMPLETE WITH THE EVIDENCE THAT ABSOLUTELY SHOWS ONE MANS FIGHT FOR HIS FREEDOM AGAINST THE CORRUPT SYSTEM ??...READ THIS AND WEEP!
WANT TO SEE A REAL LIVE CASE COMPLETE WITH THE EVIDENCE THAT ABSOLUTELY SHOWS ONE MANS FIGHT FOR HIS FREEDOM AGAINST THE CORRUPT SYSTEM ??...READ THIS AND WEEP!
THE FBI IS HELPING CREATE THE NEXT WAVE OF CRIMINALS
The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection-and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.Roderick Vosburgh, a doctoral student at Temple University who also taught history at La Salle University, was raided at home in February 2007 after he allegedly clicked on the FBI's hyperlink. Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.Vosburgh was charged with violating federal law, which criminalizes "attempts" to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison. Last November, a jury found Vosburgh guilty on that count, and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 22, at which point Vosburgh could face three to four years in prison.The implications of the FBI's hyperlink-enticement technique are sweeping. Using the same logic and legal arguments, federal agents could send unsolicited e-mail messages to millions of Americans advertising illegal narcotics or child pornography-and raid people who click on the links embedded in the spam messages. The bureau could register the "unlawfulimages.com" domain name and prosecute intentional visitors. And so on."The evidence was insufficient for a reasonable jury to find that Mr. Vosburgh specifically intended to download child pornography, a necessary element of any 'attempt' offense," Vosburgh's attorney, Anna Durbin of Ardmore, Penn., wrote in a court filing that is attempting to overturn the jury verdict before her client is sentenced.In a telephone conversation on Wednesday, Durbin added: "I thought it was scary that they could do this. This whole idea that the FBI can put a honeypot out there to attract people is kind of sad. It seems to me that they've brought a lot of cases without having to stoop to this."Durbin did not want to be interviewed more extensively about the case because it is still pending; she's waiting for U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage to rule on her motion. Unless he agrees with her and overturns the jury verdict, Vosburgh-who has no prior criminal record-will be required to register as a sex offender for 15 years and will be effectively barred from continuing his work as a college instructor after his prison sentence ends.How the hyperlink sting operation workedThe government's hyperlink sting operation worked like this: FBI Special Agent Wade Luders disseminated links to the supposedly illicit porn on an online discussion forum called Ranchi, which Luders believed was frequented by people who traded underage images. One server allegedly associated with the Ranchi forum was rangate.da.ru, which is now offline with a message attributing the closure to "non-ethical" activity.In October 2006, Luders posted a number of links purporting to point to videos of child pornography, and then followed up with a second, supposedly correct link 40 minutes later. All the links pointed to, according to a bureau affidavit, a "covert FBI computer in San Jose, California, and the file located therein was encrypted and non-pornographic."Excerpt from an FBI affidavit filed in the Nevada case showing how the hyperlink-sting was conducted.Some of the links, including the supposedly correct one, included the hostname uploader.sytes.net. Sytes.net is hosted by no-ip.com, which provides dynamic domain name service to customers for $15 a year.When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message.With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account-and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids.Excerpt from FBI affidavit in Nevada case that shows visits to the hyperlink-sting site.The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements.While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant.The defendant in that case, Travis Carter, suggested that any of the neighbors could be using his wireless network. (The public defender's office even sent out an investigator who confirmed that dozens of homes were within Wi-Fi range.)But the magistrate judge ruled that even the possibilities of spoofing or other users of an open Wi-Fi connection "would not have negated a substantial basis for concluding that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography would be found on the premises to be searched." Translated, that means the search warrant was valid.Entrapment: Not a defenseSo far, at least, attorneys defending the hyperlink-sting cases do not appear to have raised unlawful entrapment as a defense."Claims of entrapment have been made in similar cases, but usually do not get very far," said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University's law school. "The individuals who chose to log into the FBI sites appear to have had no pressure put upon them by the government…It is doubtful that the individuals could claim the government made them do something they weren't predisposed to doing or that the government overreached."The outcome may be different, Saltzburg said, if the FBI had tried to encourage people to click on the link by including misleading statements suggesting the videos were legal or approved.In the case of Vosburgh, the college instructor who lived in Media, Penn., his attorney has been left to argue that "no reasonable jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Vosburgh himself attempted to download child pornography."Vosburgh faced four charges: clicking on an illegal hyperlink; knowingly destroying a hard drive and a thumb drive by physically damaging them when the FBI agents were outside his home; obstructing an FBI investigation by destroying the devices; and possessing a hard drive with two grainy thumbnail images of naked female minors (the youths weren't having sex, but their genitalia were visible).The judge threw out the third count and the jury found him not guilty of the second. But Vosburgh was convicted of the first and last counts, which included clicking on the FBI's illicit hyperlink.In a legal brief filed on March 6, his attorney argued that the two thumbnails were in a hidden "thumbs.db" file automatically created by the Windows operating system. The brief said that there was no evidence that Vosburgh ever viewed the full-size images-which were not found on his hard drive-and the thumbnails could have been created by receiving an e-mail message, copying files, or innocently visiting a Web page.From the FBI's perspective, clicking on the illicit hyperlink and having a thumbs.db file with illicit images are both serious crimes. Federal prosecutors wrote: "The jury found that defendant knew exactly what he was trying to obtain when he downloaded the hyperlinks on Agent Luder's Ranchi post. At trial, defendant suggested unrealistic, unlikely explanations as to how his computer was linked to the post. The jury saw through the smokes (sic) and mirrors, as should the court."And, as for the two thumbnail images, prosecutors argued (note that under federal child pornography law, the definition of "sexually explicit conduct" does not require that sex acts take place):The first image depicted a pre-pubescent girl, fully naked, standing on one leg while the other leg was fully extended leaning on a desk, exposing her genitalia… The other image depicted four pre-pubescent fully naked girls sitting on a couch, with their legs spread apart, exposing their genitalia. Viewing this image, the jury could reasonably conclude that the four girls were posed in unnatural positions and the focal point of this picture was on their genitalia…. And, based on all this evidence, the jury found that the images were of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and certainly did not require a crystal clear resolution that defendant now claims was necessary, yet lacking. Prosecutors also highlighted the fact that Vosburgh visited the "loli-chan" site, which has in the past featured a teenage Webcam girl holding up provocative signs (but without any nudity).Civil libertarians warn that anyone who clicks on a hyperlink advertising something illegal-perhaps found while Web browsing or received through e-mail-could face the same fate.When asked what would stop the FBI from expanding its hyperlink sting operation, Harvey Silverglate, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Cambridge, Mass. and author of a forthcoming book on the Justice Department, replied: "Because the courts have been so narrow in their definition of 'entrapment,' and so expansive in their definition of 'probable cause,' there is nothing to stop the Feds from acting as you posit."Declan McCullagh
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