Another controversial shooting by police

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another shooting of a black man who turned out to be unarmed, but was actively resisting arrest by fighting with the officer:

According to Sgt. Trent Crump, the officer responded Tuesday to reports of someone selling drugs out of a Cadillac SUV. Upon locating the SUV, he ordered Brisbon, the sole occupant, to show his hands.

Authorities say Brisbon ran inside an apartment building and then got into a struggle with the officer. Brisbon put his hand in his pocket, and when the officer grabbed the hand, he thought he felt the handle of a gun through Brisbon’s pants, police said.

Police say the officer repeatedly told Brisbon to keep his hand in his pocket, then shot him twice when he didn’t.

Brisbon, an ex-convict, was hit in the torso and later pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a semi-automatic handgun and a jar of marijuana from his SUV.

An internal investigation is already underway, Crump said Thursday. The Maricopa County attorney’s office will determine whether the officer will face criminal charges. Police did not identify the 30-year-old officer but said he is a seven-year veteran of the department.

So, what would the protestors have had the officer do? Apparently, police are expected to allow themselves to be shot to prove what good guys they are. Eric Garner presented a different situation than this one because he wasn’t attacking anyone. Michael Brown definitely was the aggressor, however, and this guy Brisbon (who was an ex-con) seems to have been fighting, too.

The moral of the story is that resisting arrest is not good for your health. Not following instructions about where to put your hands is not good for your health, either. Outraged demonstrators don’t care, however.

Even I, mild-mannered white woman of a certain age, know better than to make any sudden movements when stopped by police, and to keep my hands visible. I try to throw in a few “sirs,” too, if I can remember to do so.

Then again, I don’t have a police record, and I’m not aware of many crimes I’ve committed, except traffic violations. But when you’re caught, you’re caught; resisting arrest sometimes works, but the costs can be high. I suppose if you would rather die than go back to prison, though, it makes sense to try.

The WaPo commits a rare act of journalism, while Rolling Stone admits that maybe it made a few wee errors

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been quite a few new developments on the UVA rape story I wrote about yesterday, and they all point to the strong likelihood that the sordid and shocking tale told by “Jackie” was, to put it bluntly, a crock of lies.

I wish I could say it is a shock that Rolling Stone would publish such an unchecked story or that a journalist with supposedly strong investigative credentials such as Erdely would write it. No, the bigger shock is that the WaPo actually published this today:

Officials close to the fraternity [accused of rape in the RS story] said that the statement will indicate that Phi Kappa Psi did not host a party on Sept. 28, 2012, the night that a university student named Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.

The officials also said that no members of the fraternity were employed at the university’s Aquatic Fitness Center during that time frame ”” a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post ”” and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account…

The Washington Post has interviewed Jackie several times during the past week and has worked to corroborate her version of events, contacting dozens of current and former members of the fraternity, the fraternity’s faculty adviser, Jackie’s friends and former roommates, and others on campus. Fraternity members said anonymously that the description of the assailant doesn’t match anyone they know and have been telling others on campus that they did not have a party the night of the alleged attack.

If Erdely had tried a little harder to corroborate Jackie’s story, she would have found more or less what the WaPo discovered, and Erdely’s article would probably never have been written. But Erdely chose not to do her job, no doubt because the story was just too good to not be true.

Jackie’s friends are wondering, too:

A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

Everyone involved in this story was primed to believe it: Erdely, the assault awareness people, and Rolling Stone. The reporter and the paper acted with careless disregard for the truth. The assault awareness students, on the other hand, are in a different position; they are younger people, who have been brainwashed to believe they should always trust the woman who tells the story. But a certain amount of skepticism is always warranted, unfortunately: trust, but verify. The facts have to check out, and the truth is that some people lie about this sort of thing.

Statistics about what percentage of women lie about rape are meaningless. If such a lie is successful, it doesn’t enter into those statistics. Also, I would guess that older statistics underestimate what’s happening nowadays, because in recent years the emotional rewards for coming forward as a rape victim have increased compared to the past.

My guess is that Jackie herself began her story as a way to get some sympathy and attention. Maybe she even started to believe it, as effective liars sometimes do. But then it got out of hand when Erdely came to the campus seeking someone to tell her such a tale [emphasis mine]:

Jackie told the Post that she had not intended to share her story widely until the Rolling Stone writer contacted her.

“If she had not come to me I probably would not have gone public about my rape,” said Jackie, who added that she had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and that she is now on a regimen of anti-depressants.

There are many such quotes in the WaPo article that are very telling about Jackie’s state of mind. She wanted to tell her story, but was reluctant to give out too many facts or to go to authorities, because she knew her veracity would be challenged [emphasis mine]:

In July, [UVA student] Renda introduced Jackie to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone writer who was on assignment to write about sexual violence on college campuses. Overwhelmed from sitting through interviews with the writer, Jackie said she asked Erdely to be taken out of the article. She said Erdely refused and Jackie was told that the article would go forward regardless.

Jackie said she finally relented and agreed to participate on the condition that she be able to fact-check her parts in the story, which she said Erdely accepted. Erdely said in an e-mail message that she was not immediately available to comment Friday morning.

“I didn’t want the world to read about the worst three hours of my life, the thing I have nightmares about every night,” Jackie said…

Jackie said numerous times that she didn’t expect that an investigation the Charlottesville Police department opened after the article’s publication to result in any charges. She said she knew there was little if any forensic evidence that could prove the allegations two years after they occurred.

“I didn’t want a trial,” Jackie said. “I can’t imagine getting up on a defense stand having them tear me apart.”

Jackie said early in the week that she felt manipulated by Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, saying that she “felt completely out of control over my own story.” In an in-person interview Thursday, Jackie said that Rolling Stone account of her attack was truthful but also acknowledged that some details in the article might not be accurate.

Not fake, but inaccurate.

Anyone interviewing this woman should have perceived almost immediately that she was covered in red flags. But people didn’t want to know and didn’t want to see—and some don’t, even now. Witness the struggle:

Alex Pinkleton, a close friend of Jackie’s who survived a rape and an attempted rape during her first two years on campus, said in an interview that she has had numerous conversations with Jackie in recent days and now feels misled.

“One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future,” Pinkleton said. “However, we need to remember that the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.”

Pinkleton said that she is concerned that sexual assault awareness advocacy groups will suffer as a result of the conflicting details of the Rolling Stone allegations.

“While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light: Rape is far more prevalent than we realize and it is often misunderstood and mishandled by peers, institutions, and society at large,” Pinkleton said. “We in the advocacy community at U-Va. will continue the work of making this issue accessible to our peers, guiding the conversation and our community into a place where sexual assaults are rare, where reporting processes are clear and adjudication is fair and compassionate.”…

“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda, a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”

“This feels like a betrayal of good advocacy if this is not true,” Renda said. “We teach people to believe the victims. We know there are false reports but those are extraordinarily low.”

Renda said that research shows between 2 to 8 percent of all rape allegations are fabricated or unfounded.

As I wrote earlier, that research is practically meaningless. And 8 percent is not what I’d call “extraordinarily low,” either. It is significant, approximately one in twelve.

For advocates such as Renda this story is one that potentially threatens their deepest assumptions. How to reconcile it with “we teach people to believe the victims”? Actually, it shouldn’t be that hard, although it would require more soul-searching than is apparently going on. The answer is not to always “believe the victims.” The proper stance is empathy combined with a hard-nosed skepticism, and careful attention to detail. One can assume nothing.

Not believing a true accusation is devastating to the accuser, and false accusations are devastating to the accused. It is not an easy task to sort it out, but calm objectivity is an absolute necessity. It is possible to be sympathetic and respectful while not falling into the trap of unquestioning belief.

[NOTE: Rolling Stone has issued this apology for its story:

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account.

I doubt very much that these editors regret anything but being caught with egg on their face. Their decision was a violation of basic journalistic standards, and it was a purposeful choice to do so.

We haven’t heard from Erdely today. Don’t sit on a hot stove waiting. Her career as an investigative journalist ought to be finished, but I bet it isn’t.]

Rolling Stone and the UVA rape

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE 12/5 at 4 PM: The UVA rape story appears to have unraveled. See this.]

Rolling Stone has gotten a lot of publicity recently with a sensational article about a rape in 2012 at the University of Virginia, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and featuring some harrowing and disturbing details. The victim was identified only as “Jackie.”

Almost as soon as the story was published, doubts arose about its veracity, or at least about the journalistic standards of its author, who did not manage to interview the alleged perpetrators even though it would seem there were ways to have contacted them. Even worse, Erdely hasn’t been forthcoming about the extent of her efforts to find them, and did not include any mention of any of her efforts or failures in the article.

I’ve read many articles pro and con, including of course the original Rolling Stone piece in question (warning: it’s long), and I’ve got my own opinion, which is that not only did Erdely demonstrate abysmal journalistic standards, but that the story itself is quite possibly a fabrication by the alleged victim.

This could be wrong, of course; there’s no way to know at this point. But it seems that Erdely did not fact check it properly, and neither did Rolling Stone. Their excuses seem inadequate, self-serving, and obfuscating.

When I read Erdely’s piece, it seemed to me that its style resembled a romance novel gone bad. And what did the much-criticized UVA adminstration do wrong, actually? They outlined all of Jackie’s choices, and left it to her to decide what to do. Also, Jackie had only come forward to the administration about a year after the event supposedly occurred, and it’s not clear whether she named names to them. But here’s what is purported to have occurred when she did report it to the official in charge of such incidents:

When Jackie finished talking, Eramo comforted her, then calmly laid out her options. If Jackie wished, she could file a criminal complaint with police. Or, if Jackie preferred to keep the matter within the university, she had two choices. She could file a complaint with the school’s Sexual Misconduct Board, to be decided in a “formal resolution” with a jury of students and faculty, and a dean as judge. Or Jackie could choose an “informal resolution,” in which Jackie could simply face her attackers in Eramo’s presence and tell them how she felt; Eramo could then issue a directive to the men, such as suggesting counseling. Eramo presented each option to Jackie neutrally, giving each equal weight. She assured Jackie there was no pressure ”“ whatever happened next was entirely her choice.

Like many schools, UVA has taken to emphasizing that in matters of sexual assault, it caters to victim choice. “If students feel that we are forcing them into a criminal or disciplinary process that they don’t want to be part of, frankly, we’d be concerned that we would get fewer reports,” says associate VP for student affairs Susan Davis. Which in theory makes sense: Being forced into an unwanted choice is a sensitive point for the victims. But in practice, that utter lack of guidance can be counterproductive to a 19-year-old so traumatized as Jackie was that she was contemplating suicide. Setting aside for a moment the absurdity of a school offering to handle the investigation and adjudication of a felony sex crime ”“ something Title IX requires, but which no university on Earth is equipped to do ”“ the sheer menu of choices, paired with the reassurance that any choice is the right one, often has the end result of coddling the victim into doing nothing.

So a university is between a rock and a hard place. Give the student autonomy, sympathy, and information. But if the student doesn’t take responsibility and go further with the reporting process, then the university somehow should have been much more heavy-handed in telling the student what to do. I also agree, however, that this should be a criminal matter, rather than being left to the university, which does not feature the same protections for the accused.

No one has a clue whether Jackie is telling the truth, but her story doesn’t ring true in so many ways (you have to read it to understand my references here): her silence for so long despite the extreme seriousness of her allegations (premeditated gang rape of a violent nature), the advice her friends gave her to keep quiet in the face of such heinous accusations, the fact that if such rape is a widespread initiation rite for this fraternity (as alleged, involving large groups of men) it would have required the silence and acquiescence of many many more people over the years, Jackie’s lack of wounds or going for medical help despite her allegations of being pressed down onto cut glass for three hours, and the fact that Erdely had originally gone looking on many elite campuses for just such a story and searched until she found one.

Here’s more about why the story reads the way it does:

Both Erdely and Woods have said that they decided to tell the story mostly from Jackie’s point of view. As Woods told the Post, “We were telling Jackie’s story. It’s her story.”

In that same Post piece, Erdely seems protective of Jackie. She said that she did not identify the men in the article “by Jackie’s request. She asked me not to name the individuals because she’s so fearful of them. That was something we agreed on.” Erdely would not say, however, whether she knew who they were. “I can’t answer that,” she told the Post. “This was a topic that made Jackie extremely uncomfortable.”…

[Erdely] must know the basic rules of reporting a story like this: You try very, very hard to reach anyone you’re accusing of something. You use any method you can think of, including the jerk reporter move of making a surprise, in-person confrontation. (Sarah Koenig, the host of the Serial podcast, provides a good example of reporter due diligence.) You try especially hard if you are writing about something as serious as a gang rape accusation. Sometimes, what results is a more layered version of the truth. Sometimes, the answer you get makes the accused seem even guiltier…

If you fail to reach the person, you write a sentence explaining that you tried””and explaining how you tried””as a way to assure your readers that you gave the person a chance to defend themselves. We’re not sure why Rolling Stone didn’t think that was necessary.

I’m pretty sure I know. The article’s message was one the editors liked and with which they sympathized (a university winking at widespread campus sexual predators of the male variety), and they didn’t want to dilute it with any sort of disclaimer, and they thought they could get away with it.

A lot of people buy the line, “the woman always tells the truth.” But that’s poppycock. Women sometimes lie. What a shockeroo. So do men. Welcome to the world of humans.

People lie for a lot of reasons, especially to get attention or sympathy or money, or to implicate someone with whom they are angry, or sometimes because they just like to make up stories. Sometimes they even get paid for it—Stephen Glass, for example, whom Rolling Stone published long ago. Journalistic standards have only fallen since then, not risen. Whatever its truth or falsehood, Erdely’s article should have been sent back for much more work and better verification before it was ever published.

[NOTE: Here’s a long piece I wrote on the subject of campus sexual assault, after the Duke case was revealed to have been a hoax.]

[NOTE II: Here’s another good in-depth analysis of the Rolling Stone article.]

[NOTE III: If you check out the comments here, you’ll find that Erdely also can’t seem to reveal the provenance of the salacious school song lyrics she published in the article. No one but Erdely seems to have ever heard of them before. For example:

I believe Sabrina Erdely fabricated those additonal “Rugby Road” lyrics. The ones that nobody, not the president of the Glee Club and the Virginia Gentlemen, per an article, or any other alumni and students who have left comments in these threads has ever heard of until they read that Rolling Stone article.

That, or she’s the victim of a practical joker.

In addition, before the dam burst, the students profiled have been speaking to anyone who will listen that they were lied about. They even brought up those “Rugby Road” lyrics in a newspaper interview as being unbelievable.

When asked for comment about what the students said, about her reporting and those lyrics, Erdely hit back strongly, even accusing these student activists of being in denial. Importantly, she brought up why those lyrics were so crucial to the story, but didn’t explain what her source for them was.

The comment didn’t provide a link to that article in the newspaper, although I’d like to see it.

Now, of course, the song has been banned by the UVA glee club.]

Charles Barkley, changer, defends the thin blue line

The New Neo Posted on by

I used to be a basketball fan, but haven’t watched the sport in decades. I do remember Barkley quite vividly as a player, for his hulking (he was stocky rather than super-tall) aggressiveness that sometimes segued into combativeness.

Odd that Barkley has all these rather conservative thoughts, and yet he makes it clear he is a big Barack Obama fan. I’m not sure why, but my guess is that loyalty to race and the first black president trumps Barkley’s ability to connect the dots on Obama:

Looking Barkley up, I find that he’s that rarest of rara aves: a right-to left-changer. He was apparently a Republican for his entire career (and not shy about saying so, which must have been interesting), and even considered running as a Republican for governor of Alabama in 1998. Then in 2006 Barkley changed his mind, mainly over Republicans’ opposition to gay marriage, which he strongly favors, and opposition to their management of the Iraq War. He sounds a bit more like a libertarian to me than a Democrat, and in fact in 2007 he said he’s not a Democrat, he’s an Independent.

[NOTE: Barkley had gotten a lot of publicity for his remarks on Ferguson. But a bit earlier, he took a similar stance in the Trayvon Martin case.]

Eric Garner; Michael Brown

The New Neo Posted on by

This assessment of the Eric Garner case seems just about right to me. As does this one.

The death of Eric Garner was a sad sequence of events, with unintentional overkill (literally) by the police. There is no evidence there was any racist motive, but the video indicates that police were unresponsive to the fact that Garner was experiencing dangerous physical symptoms as a result of their manner of subduing him—possibly recklessly, which could have justified an indictment for second-degree manslaughter. Until we see the evidence we don’t know, but that’s certainly a logical conclusion from the video.

Paul Mirengoff writes:

There is no doubt that the officer who killed Garner was informed by the victim repeatedly that, because of the officer’s hold, Garner couldn’t breathe. It also looks very much like the officer didn’t need to maintain the hold that prevented Garner from breathing in order to keep him subdued. Garner was on the ground looking like a beached whale with multiple officers more or less on top of him. Surely, the police officer could have loosened his hold without jeopardizing the arrest.

But did the hold itself actually kill Garner? Here’s an article that evaluates the evidence in the best possible light for the police, focusing on intent and how Garner’s health may have contributed.

The fact that the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases are juxtaposed in time makes it easy for people to lump them together, as many were already inclined to do anyway. But they are very different in their fact situations. Brown was physically attacking the officer who feared for his life, Garner was definitely not doing anything of the sort. The only similarities the two cases have in terms of fact situation (beside the grand juries’ failure to indict) are these: white officer and black civilian, with the latter physically large; the civilian resisting arrest (Brown using serious aggression, Garner passively); and the death of the civilian that police were attempting to detain or arrest (by different means and for different reasons).

Another similarity is, of course, the amount of publicity these particular cases have gotten, and the use of the two cases by those wishing to whip up racial animosity. Neither case contains anything that indicates a racial motive on the part of the police, but that doesn’t stop people from assuming there was one and speaking accordingly.

[NOTE: Here’s a good piece on eyewitness testimony in the Brown case.]

[ADDENDUM: Garner’s arrest was apparently supervised by a black female sergeant.]

On the Lauten feeding frenzy

The New Neo Posted on by

Mollie Hemingway takes the media to task for its misplaced and manipulative priorities. When staffer Elizabeth Lauten posted some criticism of the Obama girls’ demeanor during their dad’s turkey-pardoning ceremony, social media went wild with anger, and the MSM covered it with the sort of attention they failed to pay to Gruber, Obama’s past associations, or pretty much anything else that would reflect poorly on Democrats:

Still, what in the world was the media doing reporting on this non-story and firing up the mob? The Washington Free Beacon reported that “major media outlets are pouring resources into tracking [Lauten’s] moves and digging into her past.” This included two network news vans camping outside of her parents’ home in North Carolina and a search of Lauten’s leaked juvenile records and college writings

And this was after Lauten had left her job as a result of the brouhaha.

The situation could not be more stark. Depart from the PC line in any way and the witch hunt is on—that is, unless you’re a Democrat. Then you get a pass—a press pass.

To impeach or not to impeach, that is the question

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed an argument in the comments section between the pro-impeachment and the con-impeachment forces.

For example, from “Truth Unites…and Divides,” we have:

Refusal to [impeach Obama] speaks to cowardice. Cowardice wildly breeds disgust, disdain, cynicism, and apathy towards the governmental system…

The GOP wants to make a difference? Remove the lawless tyrant Obola from office. PERIOD.

Bring a neutered Biden in for one year as POTUS.

Commenter “J.J.” says, on the other hand:

The Republicans must fight smart. Charging into a battle they can’t win such as impeachment is a trap that the progs hope the GOP will fall into. The coverage by the MSM would be the equivalent of Abu Ghraib. Impeachment would be somewhat the equivalent of the violent protests the progs are now engaged in. Those protest tactics, though covered sympathetically by the MSM, are turning off a lot of LIVs, just as impeachment would.

There’s more, but that’s the gist of it.

We’ve had this argument before. I see it as another example of what I’d call the DonQuixote/SanchoPanza dichotomy.

I have an emotional foot (mixed metaphor alert) in the quixotic “Truth Unites” camp. I detest Obama’s lawless defiance of the Constitution, and I would like nothing better than to see him lawfully removed for it. In fact, I would have liked the removal to have happened a long time ago, since the damage he’s done in the international field, and to the rule of law and separation of powers in this country, has been enormous, immeasurable, and perhaps irrevocable.

But I am a practical sort. I do not believe in tilting at windmills to make a point that is a good one but that will not and cannot be perceived as such, will widely be regarded as motivated by sheer animus (and racism), will almost certainly cause a backlash—and most importantly, cannot and will not succeed. The right may see the failure to impeach as cowardice, but the left would see it as a laughable, theatrical, and completely futile gesture that will backfire and play perfectly into their hands.

I wrote as much a year ago, in January of 2013:

…[I]f Obamacare goes forward and things get worse, and the Republicans win the Senate in 2014 (even if they don’t get over 2/3 of the seats there, which they almost certainly won’t), and Obama’s approval ratings drop into the cellar (low 30s or less), then there’s a chance. The public might get behind impeachment/conviction, and it’s theoretically possible (although unlikely) that even a few Democrats might come along.

That’s the only way it could happen, and I give it an infinitesimally small chance of coming about. But one thing is certain: now is most definitely not the time for impeachment. Ralph Waldo Emerson is reputed to have said, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” He was supposed to have been responding to a student “who had told Emerson that he was writing an essay about, and presumably critical of, Plato.” Emerson wasn’t talking about literally killing Plato, who had been dead for quite some time. He was talking about knowing how to chose the right time and way to undermine a person regarded as a great and powerful man.

The same is true of impeaching Obama: don’t start unless you have the votes in the Senate to convict, and the support of the American people, or you will end up hurting yourself.

Obama’s ratings are not in the depth of the cellar. Republicans still don’t have 2/3 of the Senate. Nowhere near enough Democrats would join them in a vote for conviction. Impeachment would make Obama a temporary martyr and he is perfectly okay with that, especially since he’d be victorious at the end of the day.

So I say to those who would agree with “Truth Unites,” how do you propose that Republicans actually “Remove the lawless tyrant Obola from office, PERIOD”? If you can’t do it, empty gestures are counterproductive.

One of Victor Davis Hanson’s best: on lawlessness

The New Neo Posted on by

And that’s saying a lot.

Hanson’s not a flowery writer who dazzles with his technique, but he has a knack for diving straight to the heart of the matter without wasting words. Here he tackles a very basic rot that has set in and solidified during the Obama administration, lawlessness in a host of manifestations:

In our cynicism we accept, to avoid further unrest, that no government agency will in six months prosecute the looters and burners, or charge with perjury those who brazenly lied in their depositions to authorities, or charge the companion of Michael Brown with an accessory role in strong-arm robbery, or charge the stepfather of Michael Brown for using a bullhorn to incite a crowd to riot and loot and burn. We accept that because legality is becoming an abstraction, as it is in most parts of the world outside the U.S. where politics makes the law fluid and transient.

Nor can a government maintain legitimacy when it presides over lawlessness. The president of the United States on over 20 occasions insisted that it would be illegal, dictatorial, and unconstitutional to contravene federal immigration law ”” at least when to do so was politically inexpedient. When it was not, he did just that. Now we enter the Orwellian world of a videotaped president repeatedly warning that what he would soon do would be in fact illegal. Has a U.S. president ever so frequently and fervently warned the country about the likes of himself?

What is forgotten about amnesty is that entering the U.S. illegally is not the end, but often the beginning of lawlessness. Out here in rural central California we accept a world where thousands drive without insurance, licenses, and registration. Fleeing the scenes of traffic accidents earns snoozes. There is no such thing as the felony of providing false information on government affidavits or creating made-up Social Security numbers. Selling things without paying taxes and working off the books while on assistance are no longer illegal. The normative culture is lawlessness.

Amnesty, granted through a lawless presidential act, will not stop but only encourage further lawlessness. If someone has become used to ignoring a multitude of laws without consequences, there is no reason why he should suddenly cease, given that punishment for breaking the law is still considered a politically-incorrect rather than a legal act ”” and that even with amnesties it will still be far easier and cheaper to break than obey the law. Who will deport an illegal alien beneficiary of amnesty when he again breaks the law? Amnesty will be seen as both reactive and prophylactic, a waiver for both past and future behavior.

More disturbingly, we have engendered a strange culture of justifiable lawlessness: those who are deemed exploited in some ways are exempt from following the law; those without such victim status are subject even more to it. Executive authorities compensate for their impotence in not enforcing statutes for some by excessively enforcing them on others.

The whole thing is well worth reading, and sending to others to read. One of the most important distinctions between liberals and conservatives is that the former focus on ends rather than means, justifying any means if they achieve the desired ends. Conservatives are far more likely to pay attention to means, because they realize that if you use nefarious means to achieve your desired ends you have set up the conditions for dangerous and continuing tyranny.

What Republicans should do

The New Neo Posted on by

For those who may have missed it, commenter “Otiose” outlined a plan for Republicans in Congress that has a lot to recommend it. I’m highlighting it here:

The president has…opened himself up…by so cavalierly and broadly interpreting the laws he can hardly complain if a new Congress takes pains to detail exactly how the people here illegally are to be processed.

For example, the president has issued his order which disregards certain lower level convictions for certain crimes. The Congress should pass a stand alone bill that clearly states that all offenses including those he now ignores will be grounds for denying permanent status.

A bill specifying that if an applicant fails to disclose all past criminal offenses here and abroad that any status granted now can be revoked and will be grounds for permanently denying any future application, not to mention now but also grounds for future deportation.

A bill stating that anyone granted status cannot sponsor or be used to bring any relative now abroad to the US.

A bill making it very clear that the president’s EO granting status is only temporary and no one who accepts status under the president’s EO can be granted permanent status for any reason until after some future date.

A bill that requires states and local jurisdictions to cooperate with Federal Immigration authorities in processing deportations (especially criminal holds) or lose certain Federal funds. This will cut one way in Obama’s favor now but in 2017”¦.

A bill that directs the Immigration authorities to return applicants to their home countries for processing by local US embassies unless there is some criterion met for danger in the home country. This can be used to override liberal judges in 2017 even as Obama will ignore it (assuming he signs it).

A bill liberalizing the process for people studying advanced degrees upon graduation ”“ perhaps limited to certain fields ”“ to stay after graduation and work.

A bill to allow agriculture workers to obtain seasonal visas, but qualified by strict limitations ”“ e.g. overstaying the visas makes the offender liable for immediate deportation with no rights to contest and no ability to claim amnesty for home country issues etc.

A series of such votes would be a win-win in that if Obama signed them into law he would both restrict himself now and be enabling a future president. Even if he vetoes the Democrats would be on record which depending how they voted will either soften their support or help get them out of office.

Small incremental steps are worth more than a few flash big votes that make the Republicans looked untrustworthy.

I would add that they should pass a standalone bill securing the border.

What will Boehner and the Republicans do about Obama’s executive order on immigration?

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the problems with evaluating what should be done to stop Obama is that it depends on what could be done, and that in turn depends on a set of rules, some of them obscure, about the relations and balance of power between Obama, the courts, and Congress. The fact that those rules have been ignored and/or flouted by Obama doesn’t mean that Congress can successfully do the same, or that it should.

Most of the right is shrieking “Do something! Stop him!” to Boehner and company, and experiencing the usual frustration with what is seen as the slow pace of the opposition and its RINO/establishment nature. Many people on the right believe that Boehner et al have no intention of stopping Obama, and that they basically have the same goals re immigration.

I don’t agree; I think the Republican establishment is at the very least far more interested in enforcing border security and slowing the flow of illegal entries before any consideration of what might be called amnesty. But I confess I am not at all sure. However, in all the pieces I’ve read on the subject of what Republicans should or could or would do, this comment might just be the best evaluation I’ve seen:

The GOP, even with a majority in each House of Congress CANNOT, unilaterally stop an E.O. [presidential executive order]. They can only pass non-binding resolutions or, create and pass legislation, WHICH MUST BE AGREED TO BY THE PRESIDENT. The Constitution is clear on that. This President knows that and is willing to have his actions be challenged in Court. The only thing that the GOP can do, right now, in what Boehner is doing, trying to put the budget of the Homeland Security Department on a short leash, so that the NEW Senate can weigh in, when it takes over in January.

In the mean time, the Department must promulgate the rules and regulations that will govern how the E.O. is to operate. BOTH the House and the Senate will be included in the review of the Rules. Several Committees in each House will want to weigh in on those rules, before they become final. The hearings, etc., could take a year or more.

That’s why this whole thing is nothing more than Obama’s way to get back in the news, after the humiliating defeat in the last election. He can be back on the front page. He thinks this fight will make him relevant, in his last 2 years. Then, there is the Court. The SCOTUS will have its say, which could be just the ticket to setting Obama and this E.O. back on their heals. That decision will come down before June, 2015, before they adjourn for the Summer.

I just do not see ANYTHING happening, in terms of the E.O. going into action, before the Court decides. So, relax. This whole fight is theater.

I’m no expert on Senate and House rules, but this has the ring of truth to me. What do you think?

[NOTE: As I’ve said before, even though I think Obama deserves impeachment and conviction, unless there is a two-thirds majority to convict in the Senate, it would be a bad idea to begin that process. That two-thirds Senate majority does not exist at the moment.]

Surprising article on Israel and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

This article by Matti Friedman is not surprising because of what it says, which is to describe and analyze systemic press bias against Israel. It is surprising because of where it says it. The Atlantic is one of those basically liberal periodicals with a split personality; sometimes it tells the non-PC truth, although not usually. But still, Friedman’s piece may be way too much truth for most of the Atlantic‘s readers to stomach, even though it emphasizes the elements of press bias against Israel that are more accidental, situational, and practical than ideological.

You might want to email a link to friends of yours who might become a bit more skeptical of the MSM party line if it is criticized in a publication such as the Atlantic:

To make sense of most international journalism from Israel, it is important first to understand that the news tells us far less about Israel than about the people writing the news. Journalistic decisions are made by people who exist in a particular social milieu, one which, like most social groups, involves a certain uniformity of attitude, behavior, and even dress (the fashion these days, for those interested, is less vests with unnecessary pockets than shirts with unnecessary buttons). These people know each other, meet regularly, exchange information, and closely watch one another’s work. This helps explain why a reader looking at articles written by the half-dozen biggest news providers in the region on a particular day will find that though the pieces are composed and edited by completely different people and organizations, they tend to tell the same story…

…[I]n Israel and the Palestinian territories, where foreign activists are a notable feature of the landscape, and where international NGOs and numerous arms of the United Nations are among the most powerful players, wielding billions of dollars and employing many thousands of foreign and local employees. Their SUVs dominate sections of East Jerusalem and their expense accounts keep Ramallah afloat. They provide reporters with social circles, romantic partners, and alternative employment””a fact that is more important to reporters now than it has ever been, given the disintegration of many newspapers and the shoestring nature of their Internet successors.

In my time in the press corps, I learned that our relationship with these groups was not journalistic. My colleagues and I did not, that is, seek to analyze or criticize them. For many foreign journalists, these were not targets but sources and friends””fellow members, in a sense, of an informal alliance. This alliance consists of activists and international staffers from the UN and the NGOs; the Western diplomatic corps, particularly in East Jerusalem; and foreign reporters. (There is also a local component, consisting of a small number of Israeli human-rights activists who are themselves largely funded by European governments Mingling occurs at places like the lovely Oriental courtyard of the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem, or at parties held at the British Consulate’s rooftop pool. The dominant characteristic of nearly all of these people is their transience. They arrive from somewhere, spend a while living in a peculiar subculture of expatriates, and then move on.

In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism””an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists. In this social group, this sentiment is translated into editorial decisions made by individual reporters and editors covering Israel, and this, in turn, gives such thinking the means of mass self-replication.

Matti Friedman, the article’s author, goes on to discuss (among other things) the relative ignorance of most reporters about the countries to which they are posted. There seems to be no effort whatsoever on the part of news organizations to have a correspondent with a depth and breadth of knowledge about the place about which he/she is writing. They’re so very very smart that I guess they think they don’t need it. Also, as with the president’s foreign policy advisors, knowledge might actually be a drawback in terms of toeing the party line.

Amateur hour

The New Neo Posted on by

In all the articles I’ve read that try to figure out what’s up with the Hagel ousting, I’ve been impressed by how little is actually known about it. What does it signal? My opinion is that it signals nothing more than the fact that Hagel had criticized Obama and disagreed with him on occasion, and that he was therefore somewhat lacking as a rubber-stamping yes-man. After all, politics and the reputation of the president, as well as strict ideological and behavioral obedience to his rule, appear to me to be the only qualifications necessary to work under Obama.

This article in The Hill re-stated something highly disturbing that we’ve all known for quite a few years [emphasis mine]:

Defense insiders also say some within the Pentagon view the NSC [National Security Council] as full of staffers who are politically loyal but lack expertise in managing defense policy.

In his memoir Duty, Gates writes that he felt like a “geezer” in the Obama administration, where many influential appointees below the top level were undergraduates or high school students when he was CIA director.

“Those appointees, drawn mostly from the ranks of former congressional staffers, were all smart, endlessly hardworking, and passionately loyal to the president. What they lacked was firsthand knowledge of real-world governing,” he wrote.

Hagel reportedly grew frustrated with the NSC’s micromanagement, “endless gab sessions” and for taking too long to make decisions, such as providing Ukraine with even non-lethal military assistance.

Experts say the lack of experience in managing defense policy has led to a reactive posture and perpetual crisis management at the NSC.

“It’s like second graders playing soccer,” a second national security expert said. “They get overly involved in a small number of things, and as a result, large parts of the organization go untended.”…

Candidates to replace Hagel might want assurances from Obama that they will not be steamrolled by his closest aides in national security debates, defense experts said.

“The question is not why the White House can’t keep a Defense secretary for two years, it’s what quality of person the White House can get,” said the national security expert.

Actually, the question is what quality of person the White House wants to get, and it’s not really a question, nor has it been one for years. The answer is known: a person who will do what Obama wants. Conventional qualifications go against that requirement, because the more experience and knowledge an advisor has, the more likely he/she is to defy the other amateurs in the White House and the President.

The goal is to get someone in there who sounds qualified (Hagel teetered right on the cusp) but who really isn’t, and who will defer to Obama no matter what. So we know the type of person Obama is looking for; the only question is who it will be this time, and it hardly matters, because we know his/her input will be disregarded unless it’s mere rubber-stamping.

As I wrote in 2013:

Other presidents have been inexperienced, but they have made efforts to choose experienced and knowledgeable people to make up for their own shortcomings. Obama does not believe he has any shortcomings, and so he does the opposite. For the most part, his advisors tend to have several characteristics in common besides their lack of substantive knowledge about their new fields: (1) they are good with words; (2) they are young; (3) they are focused on politics; (4) they revere Obama.

I’ve written before about this phenomenon, but we keep being reminded of it, and so it bears repeating: Obama prefers to be surrounded by politically astute sycophants who are in way over their heads and don’t realize it. That way he is less likely to be threatened or challenged.

If I were still a liberal, I believe I’d nevertheless be upset by this phenomenon. Today’s liberals, however, don’t seem to bat an eye about it. It’s not just that the Democratic Party has moved to the left, although that’s true. It’s that the interests of the country are now completely subordinate to spin and solidarity.

Oops, did I say “subordinate”? That may be true of some Democrats, but for others—including our current president—the goal is to purposely go against the interests of the country, to defang and punish it for its supposed sins.

Remember Reverend Wright, the pastor whose ideas Obama cited as formative, and in whose church he sat for twenty years? Of course, Obama had his ears stopped up at the time, but if they’d been open he would have heard sermons such as this one from 2003:

…This Government lied about their belief that all men were created equal. The truth was they believe all White men were created equal. The truth is they did not believe that even White women were created equal, in creation nor in civilisation. The Government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get White women the vote. Then the Government had to pass an “Equal Rights” amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The Government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence ”“ who sexually harassed Anita Hill ”“ and the closeted clam court that is a throwback to the 19th century, hand-picked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, hung between Clarence and that stacked court they’re about to undo Roe v. Wade, just like they’re about to undo affirmative action. The Government lied in its founding documents and the Government is still lying today. Governments lie. Turn to your neighbour and say “Governments lie”. The Government lied about Pearl Harbour. They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie! The Government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin ”“ they wanted that resolution to get us into the Vietnam War. Governments lie!…

Governments fail…The British government used to rule from east to west. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonised Kenya, Guana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian decent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African decent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African decent. Think about this, think about this.

Good thing Obama wasn’t there, isn’t it?