Beulah Balbricker Is Alive And Well And Working As a Police Investigator In Manassas, Virginia

One must watch this rather NSFW video to understand the comparison here.

The Washington Post reports that Manassas police want to bring a 17 year old boy to the police station, inject him with an erection causing substance, and photograph his  . . . shall we call it a tallywhacker?

Why?  They believe that he sent a photograph to his 15 year old girlfriend via text.  This technically violates child pornography laws and could subject him to years in prison and a lifetime of being a registered sex offender.  

But forcing him to strip in front of a group of men, injecting him, and photographing his erection is somehow OK.

Remember, actually having sex with her is legal.

In the 1970s, a loose approximation of this was seen as fodder for laughing at the prudishness of some in society, represented by Beulah Beulah Beulah Balbricker.  Now it is seen as acceptable police practice?

Child pornography laws were passed to protect children, not to allow police to victimize them.  And certainly not to impose upon a 17 year old a stigma that could annihilate any chances at a normal life.

Child sexual abuse and pornography is a serious and dastardly problem.  But the investigation and punishment need to fit the seriousness of the crime. No way should a 17 year old who sent a picture to his girlfriend have to face jail or a lifetime stigma.

Time to Reign In SWAT Teams, Restore Spirit of Posse Comitatus Act

In George Washington's Farewell Address at the close of his presidency, he warned Americans to stay vigilant.  Allowing a large military to grow unchecked would undermine liberties and infringe upon rights.

Washington's fears came from the dual role of the military.  It defended the nation, but also could be used to police it.  These lines grew blurred enough during Reconstruction and the Old West that Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.  This act prevented regular military forces from being used for internal policing.  State militia, later National Guard, are exempt as are the Coast Guard. As weapons and tactics of warfare grew more powerful and violent, Congress deemed that they had no place in policing a free society.

In the last century, criminal gangs grew more sophisticated and better armed.  They once hid in the recesses of cities and dominated the traditional vice trade.  After World War II, gangs expanded the drug trade.  More money led to more competition and more violence.  Police and citizens got caught in the crossfire.  For this, and many other reasons, SWAT, Special Weapons and Tactics units, were created.

Elite police units and advanced equipment costs money, but situations calling for their use is limited.  Despite media interest in the most dramatic scenarios, there just are not that many hostage situations, active shooters, or super dangerous gangs and terrorists lying around. Violent crime in the United States has also dropped considerably since the 1990s. So what can a SWAT team do?

According to an exhaustive ACLU study they do routine police work, but with deadly consequences. Only seven percent of SWAT actions responded to hostage or shooter situations. 80 percent of raids were for simple search warrants.  Two thirds of actions were performed as part of a drug search, but anywhere from one third to two thirds of those searches turned up nothing.

Most searches, again around two thirds, involve forced entry.  Officers use a battering ram to burst through a door with minimal warning, often deploy flash grenades, and rely on shock and awe tactics to stun their targets.  Often, possible presence of a weapon is cited as justification but most of the time, none are found.

Police bursting into a home with automatic weapons drawn and almost no warning relies on psychological trauma to immobilize the people inside.  It can also have deadly results.  In a recent case, a flash grenade mistakenly dropped into a baby crib nearly killed the 19 month old inside.

SWAT teams also make mistakes all too often.  Going to the wrong house and using such tactics can get officers and residents shot, or both.  In one instance, a 92 year old Georgia woman was killed in a hail of gunfire after shooting at police bursting into her home.

Problems also come with the militarization of police equipment.  Surplus armored personnel carriers have been granted to police forces across the country, even as National Guard units have lost their own.

No one has explained why Ohio State University's campus police need one.  According to the ACLU, they are almost exclusively used on drug raids.

The ACLU also said that the possible presence of a weapon is no justification to use SWAT. "Given that almost half of American households have guns," they noted, "use of a SWAT team could almost always be justified if this was a sole factor."

The problems with SWAT are profound because use of the teams have gotten out of control.  Local police need latitude to make decisions and respond effectively.  Then again, clearly local authorities in many areas have abused the privilege of having and using such units.

State legislatures across the country need to step in and create guidelines for the use of SWAT teams, then ensure in some way that these actions get reviewed for efficiency, effectiveness, and how well they protect or failed to protect the public.  Our system was never meant to allow routine policing with military equipment or methods.  Time to reign it in a little.

Update:  Salon article about a flash grenade blowing a hole in a young child's chest.  There is right and left agreement that this needs to be curbed.  Time to do it.

Conservatives Winning On Key Social Issues, Partly Thanks to MTV?

While social conservatives face a looming time of decision on whether or not to continue fighting gay marriage, they can claim victories on other fronts.

The Washington Times reports that teen birthrates and abortions have plummeted to lows not seen in decades. Birthrates among teens fell 10 percent just in the past two years.  Statistics indicate that teens are also having record low numbers of abortions (since legalization.)  While many do use contraceptives, studies also show that teens are waiting longer to have sex, and even then doing it less often.

According to the Washington Post, studies indicate that over 5 percent of the drop in teen conceptions come from the impact of shows like MTV's "Teen Mom."  Far from glamorizing early parenthood, the shows have shown the difficult side of raising children when too young.

Lower abortion rates show that teens are also less willing to consider abortion as birth control.  Those same shows most likely have an impact on the perception of abortion being not a clinical procedure so much as the death of a child.

These numbers do show victories for social conservatives in important fields.  Advocates must remember, however, that part of the success came not from "thou shalt not" approaches, but generally respectful portrayals of individuals taking responsibility for unwise choices.

How to Fail At Public Relations the Washington Redskins Way

The Washington Redskins, as the saying goes, can't win for losing.

At least under Dan Snyder, anyway.  Redskins fans date their franchise to the days before and after Dan. "Before" the team won Super Bowls and the ownership reigned over professional football as respected winners do.  The Dan years brought misery occasionally tinged with high, but unrealistic hopes.  Almost worse than losing came the embarrassments.  Snyder cutting down trees on park land, Snyder hiring a college coach who was clearly in over his head, Snyder filing a defamation suit over satire.  But none of those moves seem as oafish as what transpired last week.

Of all the franchises and colleges who, decades ago, used some sort of American Indian reference as a nickname, only the Washington Redskins has still not made their peace.  Many colleges changed their name to something generic. Others, such as Florida State, paid to keep the name without protest.  The Kansas City Chiefs' name strikes many as respectful instead of offensive.  Same with the Cleveland Indians, who changed their name from the Spiders to honor an Indian star pitcher, Chief Bender.

The Redskins alone remain defiant and unrepentant. Despite the historical context, it is much tougher to sell the name Redskins.  On the other hand, the Redskins fan base seems generally uninterested in considering alternatives.

Until now, Snyder and the Redskins kept that public stance.  At the same time, they gobbled up the rights to a number of alternatives, such as "Washington Warriors."  Last week, however, he launched an interesting endeavor called the "Original Americans' Foundation."  Deadspin gleefully dubbed it O.A.F. and likely plans to have no end of fun with it.

Not since Richard Nixon "CREEP"ed back into office in 1972, has a Washington DC based effort been so badly named.

Even worse, Snyder picked a CEO once investigated by the federal government. What was he accused of doing?  It involved a "defective" and "unusable" contract between his group and, wait for it, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Snyder wrote a four page letter describing the origin and intent of the foundation. Four months of study and research based on visits to 26 Indian reservations went into this organization.  But four minutes of thought should tell a person that naming the organization "OAF" and picking an individual with baggage to lead it smacks of half efforts.

The second most popular professional sport in Washington is piling on Dan Snyder.  He does not represent evil in the world.  Many of his past and present players refer to him respectfully as "Mr. Snyder."  But his new foundation reflects the same lack of thought and foresight that has often characterized his public relations as well as his operation of the football team itself.

The Ghost of Census' Yet to Come Predicts West Virginia Loses a Congressional Seat

Most people know about the three spirits in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Dickens is a stubborn and self-destructive man on many levels.  To save him from a miserable, lonely death, the spirits come to offer what later gets called "tough love."

Those who just flew in from the moon and are unfamiliar with the plot can check this out.

The Washington Post this week played the part of the grim Ghost of Census Yet to Come.  It projected that by 2060, West Virginia, among other states, will relatively or absolutely decline in population to the point that it will lose another seat in Congress.

Ebeneezer Scrooge asked the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, when showed his miserable fate of dying alone, if these were events fated or changeable.  The Ghost grimly refused to reply.

Scrooge did not accept his possible fate.  he changed his ways.  So ought West Virginia.  Experts know what builds development, productivity, wealth, and population.  Reform the court system, weed out unnecessary regulations, licenses, and fee requirements, resist the temptation to raise the minimum wage, enact fair tax practices for all rather than special deals for a few.

The question is, will West Virginia enact these measures or drift down the road to irrelevance in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College?

Is PRISM Harming America's Foreign Trade? And also, what exactly is PRISM?

Last month, Britain's The Guardian and the Washington Post, via the famous/infamous Edward Snowden, reported on a mysterious government information collection program called PRISM. 

PRISM is an ongoing government effort to collect information from the internet about both foreign and domestic targets. Concerns about the collection and use of this data have produced a backlash from people and businesses around the world.  Many fear the effects, use, and possible misuse of information.

The National Security Agency somehow (it is not known how) obtains information about certain targets (it is not known who or why or how they are selected) from major internet entities, such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and others. All three of these companies, among others, strongly deny that they have granted access to the federal government for any information collection.

According to a Washington Post summary of known information:

We know that PRISM is a system the NSA uses to gain access to the private communications of users of nine popular Internet services. We know that access is governed by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in 2008. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tacitly admitted PRISM’s existence in a blog post last Thursday. A classified PowerPoint presentation leaked by Edward Snowden states that PRISM enables “collection directly from the servers” of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other online companies.

 It goes on to say that

The (New York) Times says that major tech companies have systems that “involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company’s servers.”
Data is “shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk,” the Times reports. The scheme is “a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.”
A source told CNet’s Declan McCullagh that PRISM is “a very formalized legal process that companies are obliged to do.” A source — perhaps the same one — says that “you can’t say everyone in Pakistan who searched for ‘X’ … It still has to be particularized.”

Additional reporting by Cato Institute writer Julian Sanchez raises more concerns.  The law which pertains to PRISM removed the constitutionally necessary provision that a warrant must be obtained if the main target was a non citizen.  However, information collected about a US citizen in the process is allowed to be stored until someone proves that it is worthless.

The NSA itself makes the determination on the worthiness of the information.

Furthermore, information under some circumstances can be obtained and kept even if the only people involved are US citizens.

The knowns, unknowns, and what is unknown that is unknown have introduced uncertainty into the equation.  As US and foreign media scurry to gain further insight on the scope and target of the program, other countries may be setting up what defenses they can.

Companies involved in data collection and security, along with their home countries, fear intrusion by American intelligence services. At a recent panel held by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a guest speaker pointed out that some countries may follow Brazil in passing laws to protect digital information and commerce.  This measure passed by countries fearful of surveillance could backfire in restricting information to places with archaic security.

Furthermore, it is difficult to estimate how many foreign nationals may try to avoid doing business with American firms because of PRISM and the lack of understanding about it.

Most agree that speculation about PRISM is driven in part by fear of the unknown, as well as the potential for abuse.  It remains to be seen what the world's reaction will be, as well as what the full scope of the program actually is.  

The Constitution Confuses Him Because "It Was Written Over a Hundred Years Ago."

This isn't a high school student. It's Washington Post staffer and blogger Ezra Klein. He said that the Constiution should have no binding power and that it is confusing because it was written over a hundred years ago.



Other things that might confuse Mr. Klein are:

A Christmas Carol, published in December 1843

A certain document that starts "When in the course of human events . . ." written in the summer of 1776

Any European based fairy tales, like "Jack and the Beanstalk." They had their origins in the Middle Ages, so they must be, like, waaaayy confusing.

Proverbs 22

This one might be well over Mr. Klein's head, being a liberal and all. Also, Cicero said it over 2,000 years ago. "Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?"

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." Thomas Jefferson said this over two hundred years ago, so it must be twice as confusing to Mr. Klein. Does he know that Mr. Jefferson founded the Democratic Party? The background of that is probably too much for Klein to comprehend, it happened in the 1790s.

“You can educate a fool, but you cannot make him think” This comes from the Talmud, a collection of Jewish legal thinking from over 1500 years ago. That makes it fifteen times more confusing than the Constitution. It also sums up left wingers to a T.

And most confusing of all, a link to that mysterious and unknowable document, the Constitution. It's filled with such confusing phrases as "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." That is the one that the almighty Obama himself seems to have a lot of trouble comprehending. I think the word "herein" is where Klein is having trouble.

In any event, the Constitution lives so long as we uneducated heathen know it, live it, and defend it when necessary. I think it is amazing that a Keyser High School political science class is poised to win a state title based on their knowledge of not only the Constitution, but also important influences like John Locke and the Magna Carta. Maybe Ezra Klein should take AP Government at Keyser High and learn a little something.

Palin Derangement Syndrome

Palin Derangement Syndrome should hit the DSM IV any day now. It refers to the chronic delusion among liberals and left wingers that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is both irrelevant and a major threat. It is closely related to Bush Derangment Syndrome, symptoms of which included the beliefs that George W. Bush was dumber than a box of boxes, but also capable of altering the world's weather for his own evil purposes.

Newsweek's now infamous cover of Ms. Palin in tight running clothes turns out to have violated the law. The magazine, in its zeal to somehow harm Palin's image, used an image still under copyright protection from Runner's World. This rises almost to the obsession of Dan Rather, who tried to find any shred of a story that might compromise the presidency of George W. Bush. To President Bush's credit, this resourceful and experienced reporter never found anything worthy of reporting.

Next came the Washington Post's blogger Ana Marie Cox who sullied her own reputation as a book reviewer by claiming with smug satisfaction that, although she agreed to review Palin's bestseller Going Rogue, she actually did not read it. Then she claimed Palin didn't write it!

If I edited anything connected with one of America's more prestigious papers and my writer failed to do as assigned, she or he would be reprimanded or gone, simple as that. Why sign up for the review if you have no intention of reading the book?

A couple of years ago I read Tip O'Neill's autobiography Man of the House. I could not find much to agree with politically. much as when I read Raymond Chafin's autobiography several years before. However, I learned a great deal about politics at different levels from both men. There is not a lot that you would want to emulate from Chafin's, but it does tell you how some people think. I am not sure where the Post digs up its book review bloggers and writers, but I could send them quite a few college freshmen who could do better.

The level of hatred Palin inspires correlates strongly to the left and liberal media establishment's dislike of middle America. Palin comes from the same mindset that produced many of our greatest leaders. That mindset always strikes the more cultivated as too country, too unrefined, too close to the real American people for their comfort. People like Ana Marie Cox would like to pretend that regular folks didn't exist. That is something that even liberals like O'Neill and Chafin understood, that at the end of the day regular folks had their say and you as a politically minded person had to understand that. That is the gap between old time American liberalism and what passes for ideology among left wingers today.

Smart Republicans filled that vacuum and have fought hard to protect American jobs from false climate theories. New faces like Palin understand the connection that must exist between a political figure and the people. Her popularity comes from the fact that she is more like one of use than the Ana Marie Coxes of the world will ever be. And that is why they hate her so.

**********************************************************************

I'll admit when I am wrong. I did not think that Palin made a good move when she resigned as governor of Alaska. I will say that I probably would not have done the same in her shoes, but she definitely exploded onto the national scene in the past few months. She joins a very large and worthy group of Republicans who will contend for the presidency in 2012.