leave those animals alone

Florida and Alaska are both considering laws banning bestiality, following incidents of men having sex with various animals.

I tend to be a "keep the government out of the bedroom" kind of guy, but I am completely behind Florida and Alaska on this one. And the argument isn't based on what I think is gross or fun or whatever. It's the same argument that should be applied to other acts involving sex that we deem crimes.

The lack of consent.

Animals can't give informed consent to have sex. So banning sex with them is like having laws for statutory rape, or against having sex with somebody in a coma, or somebody who is for whatever reason incapable of giving informed consent.

If they can't say or nod "yes", assume you should go somewhere else for your thrills. And dogs, sheeps, goats etc can't say yes.

jim webb on prisons

I missed this but Virginia Senator Jim Webb (D) wants to reform American prisons. He notes a lot of problems - incarceration rates that put us in the same range as China, young blacks being in prison disproportionately, too many people in prison for little things like parole violation or holding drugs while violent offenders are out on the street.

Webb is no bleeding-heart liberal. He's identified a lot of problems. The prison-industrial complex will no doubt oppose him - hey, if you are running a for-profit prison, every guy put in prison for being found with pot while on parole is a revenue source. The so-called law & order types and people who are still convinced (despite ALL evidence to the contrary) that locking people up and seizing property without due process is the only way to keep us all safe from the scourge of illegal drugs will also no doubt oppose any reform efforts with scare tactics and innuendo that Webb is soft on criminals. But I wish Webb luck - this is a battle worth fighting.

be careful out there, samaritans

Because being a good Samaritan doesn't immunize you from lawsuits, at least not in California. So think twice about jumping in to help somebody, in case your intended beneficiary turns out litigious.

three outrages

In this morning's news we can find three outrages that nicely summarize the state of America in summer 2008.

Outrage 1: Race Politics

Any thoughts that John McCain was "different" from the rest of the Republican Party - that McCain was "better" in any way, should be finally laid to rest by his absurd television commercials. And by their response. McCain's campaign links Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears - two white blondes of, ahem, questionable repute. And then McCain's campaign and McCain himself have the nerve to accuse Obama of playing the race card? In modern America, post-1964, only one party has played the race card in America - the Republican Party. The GOP, the party of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, of Patrick Buchanan and the "Southern Strategy" of wresting the loyalties of white racists from the Democrats. McCain accuses Obama of playing the race card? Blame the victim.

Outrage 2: The Monarchy I mean Imperial Presidency

A Federal district judge has ordered former White House counsel to appear before the House to answer questions about the Great US Attorney Massacre. The judge, John D. Bates, does not buy the de facto Bush Administration's maximalist position that the "unitary executive" means that NOBODY who works for the President in the executive branch (and that could be everybody, down to the lowliest clerk in the Veteran's Administration) can be held accountable by the legislative branch. Bates, by the way, was appointed by Bush. The key statement by Bates: "The Executive cannot be the judge of its own privilege and hence Ms. Miers is not entitled to absolute immunity from compelled congressional process."

Sorry, Bush-Cheney, but nobody else buys your theory that only the executive branch may judge the executive branch. We fought a war back in 1776 to get rid of the monarchy, we don't want an elected one to replace it. But it remains to be seen whether the Bushies obey the judicial and legislative branches' efforts to force them to tell them anything about anything. They've ignored decisions before, after all... and now only have 6 months left to delay before getting out of the White House scott-free.

Outrage 3: The New Police State

For the entire Bush Presidency, they have worked to expand police powers. Here is the latest example: the Customs and Border Protection people now have the right to take away from you any laptop, thumb-drive, documents, cellphones, ANYTHING they want when you enter at an airport. And they don't have to have any suspicions or any leads that you are a bad person, and they don't have to promise to keep your information private, and they don't have to commit to a specific time to give the stuff back to you. All to protect YOU from terrorism. And again, they need proof of nothing. If you look just look funny to the Customs agent, that's enough.

Frankly, I prefer the terrorists to the threat from an overweening police state of the sort the Bushes and Republicans are trying to set up. Don't we have any Constitutional protections any more? Apparently not.

let the market punish failure?

So many laissez-faire, free market, anti-regulation types insist that the market will punish companies that make poor quality goods and are otherwise in some way inadequate. They like to criticize the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for being anti-business and un-American. Some of the more extreme types call OSHA a "fascist" organization made up of "safety nazis" that force unreasonable edicts upon our saintly private sector. Just for fun, you know.

So they probably don't like the recent announcement by OSHA to recommend fining Imperial Sugar $8.7 million for its unfair safety practices that led to the explosion in February that killed 13 people. OSHA says Imperial knew about the dangers at that plant since 2002 and did nothing to fix them. And on top of that, even after the explosion in Savannah, Imperial let its sugar refinery in Louisiana operate with the same hazardous conditions - sugar dust 4 to 5 FEET thick! - until OSHA force them to close IT down before it blew a bunch of workers to kingdom come.

Personally, it would seem unwise to me to disregard safety to such an extent that your sugar refineries are blowing up. I mean, that destroys productive capacity, right? Oh, and it kills people, too.

Maybe Imperial thought it would never happen to them - an explosion, I mean. That would just make them stupid. Or they figured hey, the cost isn't worth it so we'll go along with the risk. After all, Imperial executives and lawyers don't have to work in those plants...

This isn't the sort of behavior that the market will correct. Sure, in the long run if enough sugar plants blow up, people might become reluctant to work there. For a while, at least. Fact is of course, all sorts of dangerous jobs are still out there and still getting applicants because of the economic realities many people face - that might be the only job in the area they can get.

I hope OSHA's decision sticks, although $8.7 seems too a small fine to me. But Imperial will appeal of course.

contempt

Former Pentagon chief lawyer William "Jim" Haynes II had his day before Congress, answering questions about torture, Abu Ghraib, and the like.

Except he didn't answer the questions. As Dana Milbank counted, In two hours of testimony, Haynes managed to get off no fewer than 23 don't recalls, 22 don't remembers, 16 don't knows, and various other protestations of memory loss.

This is the worst case of stonewalling since Alberto Gonzales' long-running series of unhelpful and uninformative appearances before Congress, after a selective lobotomy ruined any relevant memories.

Does ANYBODY really believe that Haynes can't remember things like whether he saw a memo outlining the effects of torture? This isn't like asking what you had for breakfast on September 28, 2006. This is something that I would imagine was a bit unusual.

Why can't Congress do more to compel people like Haynes and Gonzales to answer the questions? Maybe Congress should consider reviving its power to jail people.

q&a about detention

Question: How often does the Supreme Court (and other courts) have to tell the de facto Bush Administration that it can't just lock up people and throw away the key?

Answer: It doesn't matter how often, because the Bush regime will continue to hold people without due process anyway.

I like Eugene Robinson's para on this: It shouldn't be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can't have people taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they've been unjustly imprisoned -- not even on grounds of mistaken identity. But the president in question is, sigh, George W. Bush, who has taken a chainsaw to the rule of law with the same manic gusto he displays while clearing brush at his Texas ranch.

No doubt the Bushies will draft more legislation describing some sort of extra-constitutional legal provision, will scare Congress witless by telling them if they don't pass it, Americans will die any minute. And Congress will swallow hard, look at their feet, and maybe let it pass - one last slice from the fabric of the Constitution.

I hope they resist. Because as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

The laws and Constitution, our dedication to due process and the rule of law not of men, is what makes America great. We should not allow it to be sullied. It is to our collective shame that we have let Bush do all that he has to the law (and not just related to terrorism).

is john mccain a real american?

I was wondering when the legal and constitutional status of John McCain would become a news item. Now it has, with the Senate passing a resolution that it believes McCain, born in the Canal Zone (in Panama) to two American citizen parents, is a "natural born" American and therefore eligible to be President.

I agree with the Senate, as do many legal scholars. I don't like McCain, but the fact that he was born outside of the United States doesn't change the fact that he is a natural born citizen - the fact that his qualification as an American citizen was based on who his parents were rather than the accident of where he was born does NOT change that fact.

But I think we should go further. The restriction against non-natural born citizens assuming the Presidency is archaic. The Founding Fathers inserted it to prevent some sort of puppet being installed by a European power - as happened in Mexico, for example, during the US Civil War, when France installed an Austrian as an emperor (and puppet of France) for Mexico.

But that was then. No country is going to be able to impose a President on the US. So why have this ONE limitation that precludes naturalized citizens from having full rights of an American citizen? I probably wouldn't vote for him, but Arnold Schwarzenegger SHOULD be allowed to run for President if he wants. Likewise Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, born in Canada but living in the US since she was a small girl.

Come on, Congress and the states. Let's pass a Full Citizenship Amendment to let any talented naturalized American seek the highest office in the country.

morons on the march

There is another torture case reaching the courts. In a twist, it doesn't involve the de facto Bush Administration.

Seems that a company called Prosper Incorporated - henceforth known as Moron #1 - was having a team-building exercise, and thought that in order to make a point about how its people needed to really, really try to sell their instructional videos, it would be a good idea to WATERBOARD SOMEBODY. (To quote Dave Barry, "I am not making this up.")

Then a salesman called Chad Hudgens (Moron #2) volunteered to be waterboarded. And so it happened, right outside their Provo office. Then supervisor Joshua Christopherson urged his staff to hit the phones and sell that crap self-coaching stuff to people.

It gets murky. Hudgens did say he volunteered for a team-building exercise but didn't know it would involve torture. The company says he knew what he was volunteering for. And now Hudgens is suing.

My verdict. Whoever at Prosper thought this was a good idea is definitely a moron.

If Hudgens KNEW he would be waterboarded, he is a moron. If he didn't know, then he's exonerated of that.

And in any case, although Hudgens doesn't know whether the government should use waterboarding, he said he would have told anybody anything to get it to stop.

try again, maryland, to stop cellphone driving

Unfortunately, a committee in the Maryland House of Representatives killed a bill for now that would make it illegal to use a hand-held cellphone while driving. That's too bad. It would be a decent bill. But a BETTER bill would ban talking on a cellphone at all while driving.

Some of the reasons given for voting against the bill are stupid. One legislator, Tom Hucker, said he didn't see any data that proved it was dangerous. He's just not looking hard enough. As I have noted before, there are studies that show that driving while talking on a cellphone is possibly even more dangerous than driving DRUNK. And using a hand-held phone doesn't really help much.

Barbara Frush, who demonstrates a brilliant willful ability to ignore clear evidence (she said "I've heard all the arguments, and no one has convinced me that cellphones are as dangerous as people say.") that really should earn her a place in the de facto Bush Administration (despite being a Democrat), plays the "single woman who drives around" safety argument.

Sorry, that's lame. Sure, CARRY the phone. In an emergency (being chased by a stranger in a car, in a wreck, whatever), USE the phone - maybe even while driving, if the situation requires it. But please don't try to convince me that even one-tenth of one percent of driving-while-cellphoning conversations involve emergencies. Unless Frush means emergencies that involve conveying critical information like "be sure to buy some potatoes," "did you see the latest news about Paris Hilton," or "that new guy in accounting is hot but he's a dick."

I hope Michael Lenett tries again. Every state should do something like this, as many foreign cities and countries have. Look, I don't necessarily hate cellphones. I even have one. But driving while cellphoning is dangerous - to the driver, to passengers, to drivers of other cars, and to pedestrians. It should be banned.

keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel, again

Virginia's state legislature is considering banning people from driving and text-messaging at the same time.

This falls into the category of, Do People Really Need to Be Told Not to Do Something This Frigging Stupid? Unfortunately, the answer is obviously Yes, because people DO text-message while operating large pieces of machinery moving at high speeds.

DWT (driving while text-messaging) is incredibly dangerous. Not just because it pulls your eyes off of the road and over to the cell phone, although that's obviously extremely dangerous. But also because it distracts you from the task at hand, which SHOULD be getting from point A to point B without killing yourself or anybody else.

Virginian legislators have also tried and failed to pass a ban on driving while talking on a cellphone. Please try again - DWC (driving while cellphonetalking) is a very bad thing to do. Other states have passed laws banning this. In fact, I'd like to see the federal government require such statutes if states want to keep highway funds coming in.

States ban drunk driving, not out of any prudery against tippling but out of recognition that driving while drunk endangers the driver, his passengers, people in other cars, pedestrians, and even people sitting in their living room on the street side of their house. Again, researchers have found that DWT and DWC is even MORE dangerous than DWI.

Virginia and other states, please keep up the effort to ban this behavior. And you out there, SHUT UP AND DRIVE. Let that terribly important text message about the new tennis racket you just bought wait for a few minutes. And if you simply MUST use any device other than the steering wheel, brakes, and gas pedal, then PULL THE HELL OVER.

sue everybody!

Imagine, if you will, a young man, aged 29, driving down the road. He hits another vehicle and dies and now his dad wants to sue people. OK.

But wait. The son was drunk, with blood levels TWICE the legal level for intoxication, and just for kicks there was also marijuana in the car. Oh, and he was speeding on the interstate. Oh, and he was talking on a damn cell phone. Oh, and he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

So I wonder quite what the rationale is for suing the tow truck company that owned the tow truck this young man hit. And for suing the driver of a car who's car was stalled on I-64 and was getting help from the tow truck driver. And for suing the restaurant that served the driver.

Anyhow, that's what Dean Hancock, father of the late St Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, is doing. But he should be more creative in his lawsuits -- after all, there are PLENTY of entities that had some connection to the accident.

First, he should sue the manufacturer of the driver's stalled car because if that car had been made better it wouldn't have stalled and Josh Hancock wouldn't have hit that tow truck in his speeding, drunken, seatbelt-scorning cellphone wielding stupor. Then for good measure he should sue the manufacturer of the tow truck itself because if it had been made out of Nerf-style foam the impact wouldn't have killed the drunken, speeding, cell-phone using, seatbelt-ignoring Josh Hancock. He should sue the maker of Hancock's SUV for not installing technology to lock the ignition to prevent somebody who is completely bombed out of his mind from being able to operate the vehicle. He should sue the maker of whatever booze Josh Hancock was drinking for supplying booze in the first place.

Finally, he should sue the corpse of President Dwight Eisenhower for authorizing the construction of the Interstate Highway System because without I-64, there could have been no wreck on I-64 to kill drunken Josh Hancock.

I tend to feel sympathy for the father of somebody who has died in an accident, even if the person who died was clearly completely irresponsible in his behavior, and clearly completely responsible for his own death. But such mass-blast lawsuits tend to erode the sympathy pretty quickly. Leave Eddie's Towing and the other victims of this legal shooting spree alone.