civil rights archive at FraudWasteAbuse

Archive for the 'civil rights' Category

Jul

Bread, Water, and Michael Moore

By JSwan 9 Comments

Categories: Democrats, civil rights and constitution

I think it’s funny that people try to dispute the facts in Michael Moore’s films. Why? Because the facts are correct and easily verifiable. Then again, so are the facts on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide: A substance that kills millions and devestates entire economies each year. On the streets, this substance is commonly known as “water.”

It is also a fact that virtually 100% of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours after injesting… bread.

What should be disputed is the perspective which Michael Moore presents. For example, in SiCKO it is stated that “there are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.” This is a verifiable fact. However, this fact alone fails to give viewers a complete picture.

Allow me to explain: The population of the United States is just over 300 million. That means that roughly 17% of Americans are uninsured. That’s a pretty big chunk - about one in six people - so let’s break it down further to make sure we are not being mislead.

About 11 million of the 50 million uninsured Americans are elegible for government healthcare plans that already exist. That leaves about 39 million, or about 13% of the population that may be involintarily without insurance. That’s not quite as bad, but can we do better? Yes.

Of the 39 million people that do not have insurance and are not eligible for existing government healthcare plans, about 7.8 million of them can afford their own health insurance.

Given these additional facts, the number of people truely in need is actually about 31.2 million, or about 10% of the US population.

So how much did Michael Moore misrepresent the numbers? By about 70%.

Mar

Never do jury duty again

By FraudWasteAbuse 19 Comments

Categories: news, life, politics, law, legal, crime, court, civil rights, slavery, fascism, trial and jury duty

Most of us dread getting a jury summons in the mail. Many of us have to miss work or school and sit in a courthouse for hours, and in some cases days, for measly compensation, which most of the time is far below minimum wage.

Despite what a lot of people think, not registering to vote won’t prevent you from getting summoned. Most jurisdictions now use drivers license records in addition to voter rolls to create potential jury pools. It’s just a matter of time until you get that notice in the mail, and unless you are going to school or have some sort of serious medical problem, your chances of getting excused are slim. Fortunately, there are a few tried-and-true ways to get out of it.

The easiest way to avoid jury duty is to simply chuck the jury summons in the garbage and don’t show up. This might be unsettling to many people who may worry about getting into trouble with the law. The truth is that in most major cities, the no-show rate for jurors is around 50%. If they aren’t going to bother showing up, why should you? Most jurisdictions don’t have the time or the resources to track down everyone who has skipped out on jury duty. Besides, no one can prove that you ever received the summons unless it was sent by certified mail.

If you can’t bear the idea of ignoring a government order to serve at its whim, there is another sure-fire way to get out of jury duty. During voir dire you will likely be asked if you believe that you are able to make a ruling based on the what the law says and the evidence presented. Simply state that you believe no such thing and that every jury has the right to render a verdict how they see fit despite what the law says. This concept is called jury nullification, and mentioning it is a guaranteed ticket home.

You see, judges and lawyers don’t like it when jurists know about jury nullification. The legal concept of jury nullification gives a jury more power than anyone in the courtroom, including the judge. It gives the jury the power to protect the accused against unjust laws and governmental tyranny. For example, a man is on trial for soliciting a prostitute. The evidence has been presented and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the man is guilty. If the jury were to choose a verdict based the law, they would declare the man guilty. But if the jury felt that the laws criminalizing prostitution were unjust, jury nullification allows them to render a verdict of not guilty despite what the law says.

Of course, you may not even get that far in the jury selection. If you happen to be a doctor, attorney, or someone who seems reasonably intelligent, you are likely to be dismissed. Trial lawyers tend to want morons on the jury. They like people who can be easily swayed. With all that said, do you really think someone on trial considers his or her peers to be twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty?

Mar

Even the Nazis got a trial

By FraudWasteAbuse 2 Comments

Categories: news, politics, Iraq, War on Terror, law, terrorism, government, Republicans, war, Afghanistan, Bill of Rights, drugs, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty, constitution, fascism, Nazis, Guantanamo, War on Drugs, Guantanamo Bay, Hitler and Nazi

Even the worst of the Nazis got a trial, even though the trial was a sham. The indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation’s law. Even US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. But I digress.

The top Nazis could get a trial despite plunging Europe into its most destructive war and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people. Yet the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are somehow undeserving of a trial because they’re too barbaric, or happened to be kidnapped and sold to the Americans for a cash reward. Forgive me if I think the Nazis were a bit more dangerous and barbaric than some religious fanatics upset that a foreign military started shooting up their country.

Supporters of detaining alleged terrorists without trial posit that we did the same things with captured Germans and Japanese during World War II. The problem with trying to classify captured terrorists as prisoners of war is that we are not at war. Terrorism is still considered a federal crime, and sending the military to fight the crime of terrorism doesn’t make us any more at war than sending the military to fight drug cartels makes us at war. The government doesn’t consider arrested drug dealers to be POWs, nor does declaring a “War on Drugs ” strip accused drug dealers of their right to a fair trial.

Mar

Atlanta suburb gives citations for unattended idling cars

By FraudWasteAbuse 7 Comments

Categories: news, politics, bureaucracy, cars, insanity, government, crime, rights, civil rights, liberty, police, Atlanta, law enforcement, fascism and citation

In the city of Forest Park, a suburb of Atlanta, people are getting ticketed for leaving their cars unattended as they warm up in the morning. This appears to be another one of those “for-your-protection” laws, where the people who the law is supposedly protecting are the ones who get screwed. [digg=http://www.digg.com/politics/Atlanta_suburb_gives_citations_for_unattended_idling_cars]

Forest Park police are enforcing a Georgia law that makes it illegal for someone to leave a car unattended while it is idling. Its original purpose was to prevent cars from rolling away. Today, however, Forest Park is using the law under the guise of preventing car theft. Except that the potential victim of car theft is the one who gets slapped with a $168 fine. Fourteen people have been find since January. I guess this is what happens when the police don’t have anything important to do. Of course, an infinitely better idea would be to educate citizens rather than going around enforcing more draconian laws.

Our society is moving more and more towards abrogating citizens of all responsibility of everyday decision making. The state believes that you don’t have the capacity or even the right to make choices or risks with your own personal property. And apparently the state doesn’t think people are smart enough to know that there’s a risk to leaving one’s car unattended.

Mar

NSA wiretapping Americans without a warrant

By FraudWasteAbuse 8 Comments

Categories: news, politics, War on Terror, terrorism, government, crime, Bill of Rights, rights, Bush, civil rights, NSA, spying, wiretapping and warrantless

I’d hate to think that my fellow Americans would be so gullible as to believe the government’s promises that it was not going to use terrorist legislation against American citizens. Of course when the government makes justifications for overstepping its [digg=http://digg.com/politics/NSA_wiretapping_Americans_without_a_warrant]constitutional bounds to gain “tools” to combat whatever the latest bogeyman happens to be, one can be sure that those same “tools” will soon be used on everyday Americans.

In the latest example, it seems that there was a bit of a screw-up at the NSA and a Washington, DC lawyer was accidentally mailed a log of his private phone calls. Hilarity ensues:

It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked “top secret.” And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.

You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.

By all accounts, that’s what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans’ phone calls without warrants. Belew didn’t know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA’s surveillance program.

The pair are seeking $1 million each in a closely watched lawsuit against the government, which experts say represents the greatest chance, among over 50 different lawsuits, of convincing a key judge to declare the program illegal.

Read the rest here.

Mar

Sex offender hysteria

By FraudWasteAbuse 6 Comments

Categories: politics, sex, paranoia, insanity, government, crime, civil rights, liberty, sex offender and sexual predator

Today I came across a story about how lawmakers in Ohio are planning yet another way to punish people for crimes they’ve already been punished for. Not content with forcing sex offenders to register with the sheriff in the county in which they live or barring them from living near a school, now a new law has been proposed that will force sex offenders to get special colored license plates that would allow the public to identify them. [digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Sex_offender_hysteria]

Does anyone else think our politicians have gone way overboard on this issue? I personally think that they went overboard the moment they required sex offenders to register, even after serving prison time. Here is just a sampling of some of the feel-good-but-useless-and-life-ruining laws that have been passed around the country:

- In Florida, sex offenders are barred from hurricane shelters and must report to the nearest prison if they have nowhere else to go.

- In Iowa, sex offenders are banned from living within 2,000 feet of schools and day care centers, which essentially bans sex offenders from living in most cities and towns.

- Georgia law prevents sex offenders from living, working, or loitering within 1,000 feet of a school, church, playground, or school bus stop. In some cases, entire counties are off limits.

- California has put out a piece of legislation which would enforce lifetime monitoring of convicted sexual predators and the creation of “predator free zones”.

We’ve all heard the insane cases where seemingly normal activity can ends up getting some poor schmuck on a sex offender registry. Like the 18 year old boy who gets convicted of having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, or the man who grabbed the a girl’s arm and scolded her for running in front of his car.

It appears that the only real thing these draconian laws accomplish are ruined lives for non-violent and non-repeating sex offenders, and a false sense of security for the community. If these people are such a danger to the community in which they reside, why are they being released from prison? If they disregarded laws against the molesting of children, why would they follow laws preventing them from loitering near schools and playground?

Much of the hysteria surrounding sex offenders can be blamed on the media. From sensationalizing local stories nationwide for weeks, to shows like “To Catch a Predator”, the media has kept American interest in sex offenders on the front burner. After doing a little research, many of society’s preconceived notions about sex offenders (not surprisingly) are wrong:

The vast majority of minors (94%) are victimized among family or friends. 84% of assaults on children under 12 occur within a residence. These statistics make distance laws (e.g. 1000 feet from a school) uncalled for. Another misconception people have is that sex offenders have a high recidivism rate. Actually, the opposite is true. Recidivism rates for sex offenses are relatively low, typically running in the 3-13% range, and among the lowest of all types of crimes.

I’m not trying to suggest that there aren’t real, dangerous criminals out there. But, the 18 year old guy who gets caught getting oral sex from his 17 year old girlfriend isn’t one of them.

Feb

To whom does the US Constitution apply?

By FraudWasteAbuse 26 Comments

Categories: politics, Islam, Iraq, War on Terror, terrorism, government, war, Bill of Rights, rights, Bush, civil rights, liberty and constitution

There is a great debate in the United States over whether or not terrorists have the same rights as American citizens, or even if terrorists have any rights under the Constitution at all. President Bush has maintained that captured terrorists are enemy combatants, and do not have the rights an privileges guaranteed by the Constitution. Bush is so adamant that terrorists do not have rights under US law that they are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, where Cuba technically has sovereignty even though the United States has effective legal control.

Another popular claim is that captured terrorists are actually prisoners of war. Prisoners of war do not typically get to challenge their detention and so captured terrorists must be held until hostilities have ceased.

Some even go as far as claiming that not even illegal immigrants have rights under the Constitution, because the Constitution only applies to American citizens.

There are several flaws in these claims. I’ll address the first one in this post and cover the others later. First, let’s evaluate the notion that non-Americans do not have constitutional rights. If one reads through the Constitution it becomes apparent that all references to “citizens” in the Constitution have nothing to do with the rights of the people. Most references are rules as to how one can participate in the political/election process. In fact, the Bill of Rights makes no distinctions between citizens and non-citizens.

Consider this: How can we be sure of our government’s claims that a suspected foreign terrorist is indeed a foreign terrorist until that person has had a fair and impartial trial to determine his status? What is to prevent an American citizen from being arrested, detained, and accused of being a foreign terrorist? That person would have no way to confront his accusers and prove his innocence.

This leads me to my conclusion. In truth, the Constitution does not apply to non-Americans. It doesn’t even apply to American citizens. The Constitution is a contract between the federal government and the states, and thus applies to the federal government. The Constitution itself is a list of rules and powers of the federal government. It is specifically enumerated and if it isn’t listed, the government isn’t allowed to do it. The Bill of Rights is a list of things the federal government may not do. Nowhere does it make an exception for non-citizens, terrorism, etc.

Feb

Alabama’s dildo police

By FraudWasteAbuse 4 Comments

Categories: politics, sex, government, Bill of Rights, Alabama, civil rights and liberty

Now I’m no coneisseur of dildos or vibrators, but I’m happy to report that the government of Alabama is using its taxpayers’ dollars well. Instead of focusing on petty issues, such as murder and rape, the public servants of Alabama have vigorously defended its decision to ban the commerical sale sex toys in the state…and won their case in front of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals:

MONTGOMERY — A federal appeals court issued a Valentine’s Day ruling upholding an Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys. But the devices won’t disappear from store shelves, including at one Decatur store, immediately.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Alabama’s sex toy ban is constitutional because “the state’s interest in preserving and promoting public morality provides a rational basis for the challenged statue.”

Hmm. I wonder how the court reasons that the state, an intangible and inanimate entity, can have interests? The truth is that the state does not have “interests”. Only individuals have interests. In reality, claiming that something is in the “state interest” or “national interest” is simply a government employee imposing his or her interests on you.

The lead plaintiff, Sherri Williams, said she was disappointed the 11th Circuit dated its ruling “on the very day this nation celebrates romance.”

Of course, this ruling could not have fallen on a more appropriate date, February 14th — reminding us that we should all look to the state to be the final judge of what kind of sex we can have behind closed doors.

I saved the best (scariest) part for last:

In previous appeals to the 11th Circuit, Williams and her attorneys had argued that the law was an unconstitutional intrusion into bedrooms, but the 11th Circuit held there was no fundamental right to use sexual devices.

That is a pretty bold assertion. If one completely ignores the Ninth Amendment as the 11th Circuit has, such an opinion by the court has far reaching ramifications. If it is the court’s opinion that there is no fundamental right to use sexual devices, then what devices do the people have a right to use? Using this pattern of logic, there is no fundamental right to use anything. The state is in complete control of your life and the legality of anything is at its whim.

Welcome to America. Land of the free.

Feb

I am a big government apologist

By FraudWasteAbuse 0 Comments

Categories: politics, sarcasm, government and civil rights

Yes. I’m a big government apologist. I want big government. I want more and more and more government. I think the government should get bigger and take more money and enslave more and more and more people. I want the government to raise your kids in a pod with robots for parents. I want the government to tell you what to do for the good of society. I want the government to tell you what to eat and when to crap. I want the government to tell you what to believe and when to pray. I want the government to tell you how to spend your money. I want the government to decide when your are unproductive enough to be replaced. I want the government to decide how many children you must concieve, test them, and then determine which ones will be kept and which ones discarded. I want the government to declare white people illegal. I want government RFID chips in everyone for tracking purposes. I want government cameras watching every move anyone makes and recording it on optical storage with real-time interpretation and automatic profiled arrest. I want government to mandate one gay experience a year for all adults over the age of 10. I want government to ban monogamy as it stagnates the gene pool from which they can select the next generation. I want government to require pregnancy and ban abortion. I want government to set racial quotas on birth rates.

Somebody call the sarcasm police, because I think I’m over quota.

Feb

You owe nothing to the public

By FraudWasteAbuse 0 Comments

Categories: politics, civil rights and liberty

“[The Individual] owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.”
– Hale vs. Hinkel, 201 US 43, 74-75

The implications of this single US Supreme Court ruling are broad and sweeping. If our courts and governments (state and federal) honored this single ruling as they should, there would be considerably less oppressive government intrusions upon our everyday lives as citizens.