The ACLU is scary, very scary.
The Count was a classic revolutionary.
Geronimo Remembrance Day
On Geronimo Remembrance Day, America will remember Geronimo, and the sacrafice that he made for American freedom.
A man will get at least 15 years for child porn.
“Billings man charged with receiving child porn”
Billings Gazette — 1-12-2011
A Billings man on parole for sexually abusing children appeared in federal court Wednesday on child pornography charges.
A criminal complaint filed Dec. 22 charges Leslie Jon Claassen, 50, with receipt of child porn from August through December 2010.
. . .
If convicted, Claassen faces a minimum mandatory 15 years to 40 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
Justice is blind unless you are a loner and a pot smoker.
TUCSON: Authorities charge man, 22, with murders, assassination attempt
Associated Press — 1-9-2011
“Authorities on Sunday charged a 22-year-old man described as a pot-smoking loner with trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing others at a political event, revealing that he had scrawled on an envelope the words “my assassination” and “Giffords.”
. . .
Prosecutors charged Loughner with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to killing a federal employee.
More charges are expected.”
The laws that he is being charged under show the overt prejudice of the government. He could be charged under murder laws that apply to every one. He is being charged under laws that only apply if you kill a person in the government. These laws are blatantly unconstitutional under the equal protection clause.
Man gets cruel and unusual punishment for child porn.
Bozeman man gets 5 years for child porn
Bozeman Daily Chronicle — 1-8-2011
“A 22-year-old Bozeman man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for receiving child pornography.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy also sentenced Jamie Brock Grubb to seven additional years of probation.Jamie Brock Grubb to seven additional years of probation.
According to federal prosecutors, agents with U.S. Homeland Security learned in 2009 that Grubb was using a peer-to-peer computer network to share child pornography. Using that network, investigators in both Illinois and Billings were able to download numerous images and movies of child pornography from Grubb’s computer.”
The sentence in this case is extremely disproportionate and illegal. The legal system assigns almost no penalties for pornography. There is no reason why child pornography is any different from any other. The claimed basis for banning child pornography is the inability of a minor to consent to the production. If this is the case, it is only possible to prohibit production. It is not possible to prohibit distribution. There is an additional problem though. It is almost total myth that minors cannot consent. The law has a basis for banning rape. It does not have one for banning child porn.
Florida violated the First Amendment by arresting the author of a pro-pedophile book. Actions can be dangerous, but speech cannot. This is the oldest conspiracy in the book for wrecking the First Amendment.
Amazon pedophilia author arrested
MSNBC Online — 12-20-2010
Florida officials filed an obscenity charge Monday against the author of a self-published how-to guide for pedophiles that was yanked from Amazon.com last month after it generated online outrage .
Polk County sheriff’s deputies arrested Philip Ray Greaves II hundreds of miles away from Florida at his home in Pueblo, Colorado, and charged him with violating Florida’s obscenity law.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said his office was able to arrest Greaves on Florida charges because Greaves sold and mailed his book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct,” directly to undercover Polk deputies. Judd says Greaves even signed the book.
“He very proudly sold us his personal copy,” Judd told the Associated Press. “I was outraged by the content. It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children … You just can’t believe how absolutely disgusting it was.”
. . .
“If we can get jurisdiction … we’re coming after you,” Judd said. “There’s nothing in the world more important than our children.”
Greaves is being charged with distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.
Krugman at the New York Times believes that the free market is Zombie economics.
When Zombies Win
Paul Krugman
New York Times — 12-19-2010
When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.
. . .
But such failures don’t seem to matter. To borrow the title of a recent book by the Australian economist John Quiggin on doctrines that the crisis should have killed but didn’t, we’re still — perhaps more than ever — ruled by “zombie economics.” Why?
Part of the answer, surely, is that people who should have been trying to slay zombie ideas have tried to compromise with them instead. And this is especially, though not only, true of the president.
. . .
Yes, politics is the art of the possible. We all understand the need to deal with one’s political enemies. But it’s one thing to make deals to advance your goals; it’s another to open the door to zombie ideas. When you do that, the zombies end up eating your brain — and quite possibly your economy too.
Liberation Theology and the Christmas Story
Luke 2:1-14
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Liberation Theology
The Christmas story is not a spiritual story. It is a story of economic liberation. Many religious people falsely believe that the Bible is a spiritual book. This is a total myth. As the writers of Liberation Theology contend, the Bible is not about spirituality. It is about the concrete struggles of real people against the grips of capitalism. The Christmas story is not about “joy on earth.” It is a virtual horror story that should strike fear into all people.
Capitalism is not neutral. It is an economic system that is rooted in total enmity between people. People need food. It is a virtual offense that any person should have to go purchase food in order to get this basic need met. The existence of such an economic system is an obvious sign of evil in the hearts of people. This evil has real consequences. Capitalism denies people their human rights to employment, fair wages, and access to economic resources. It is a genocidal system that perpetuates violence against humanity.
Mary and Joseph were newly weds in their 20s. They both searched for employment after they got married. They could find nothing. They finally both found jobs that paid $10 an hour, wages they could barely survive on. When they traveled to Bethlehem, they had to stay in a particular hotel because it was the only one they could possibly afford. There was an unfortunate hitch. Even though they had money for the hotel, the innkeeper lied to them and told them there were no rooms available, to deny them access to the hotel. This was a big problem since they had to have a place to stay.
Joseph told the innkeeper that there were obviously rooms available since there was not a single camel or donkey in the parking area. He also told the innkeeper that he was violating the law and attempting murder by denying them the room. The innkeeper told Joseph not to talk to him in that tone of voice. He also told Joseph that he was going to report Joseph to the police.
Joseph was an amateur hockey player. He did not get paid, but he thought it was a lot of fun. He told the innkeeper “fuck you cocksucker.” He then pulled out his hockey stick and sleighed the innkeeper. This was to fulfill the prophecy of Samuel: “And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.” (1 Samuel 15:33) Joseph and his pregnant wife then left and found a barn to stay in.
Governments are not the only agents of tyranny. Corporations are too.
Bank of America stops handling WikiLeaks payments
Associated Press — 12-19-2010
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. has joined several other financial institutions in refusing to handle payments for WikiLeaks, the latest blow to the secret-releasing organization’s efforts to continue operating under pressure from governments and the corporate world.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank’s move adds to similar actions by Mastercard Inc. and PayPal Inc. Though previous moves have prompted reprisals by hackers, Bank of America’s site is as well-protected as they come, security experts say.
Its site was problem-free through midafternoon Saturday.
“This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments,” the bank said in a statement Saturday. The move was first reported by The Charlotte Observer.
The military is not diverse nor tolerant. Allowing gays in the military is a virtual death sentence for them.
Gay sailor’s family blames military after his death
Associated Press — 7-3-2009
Relatives of a slain sailor are calling the 29-year-old’s death a hate crime.
Rose Roy of Beaumont said her nephew, Navy Seaman August Provost III, had complained a year before about being harassed for being gay.
Roy said she advised Provost to report and document the incidents, but she said the military did little to help.
“He went to the Navy to serve and protect,” she said in an interview with Beaumont’s KFDM News, “he didn’t get protected at all.”
. . .
The 29-year-old Houston native was found dead Tuesday at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. Roy said the family was told that Provost was shot three times, had his hands and feet bound, his mouth gagged, and body burned.
. . .
Investigators have called the sailor’s death a random act unrelated to the his sexuality and have taken a “person of interest” into custody. No charges have been filed.
The TSA is celebrating the holidays.
TSA choir has holiday spirit down pat at LAX
USA Today — 12-16-2010
LOS ANGELES — Travelers passing through Los Angeles International Airport are finding that security officers have more than a scan or pat-down for them this holiday season. They’re offering musical entertainment, too. The LAX TSA Choir, a group of 17 singers and musicians, all of them officers of the Transportation Security Administration, have been surprising passengers with performances of holiday music and other tunes in the midst of one of the nation’s busiest airports.
. . .
“We’ve been taking a lot of heat for what we do” at TSA, said Perez, referring to body scanners and aggressive pat-downs of travelers. “We just put a new face on TSA — I think a positive face.”
A Federal Court ordered an illegal mental competence examination. The man is accused of using Facebook.
Feds: Va. man makes DC subway bomb threat online
Associated Press — 12-15-2010
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man accused of threatening on Facebook to detonate pipe bombs on the D.C. subway system was ordered Tuesday to undergo a mental evaluation.
Awais Younis, a native of Afghanistan, was arrested last week and charged with communicating threats across state lines. Younis, 25, who lives in Arlington, described to a friend last month during a Facebook chat how he could build a pipe bomb with specific types of shrapnel to cause maximum damage on the Metro system, according to a sworn statement from an FBI agent. He also discussed planting pipe bombs underneath a sewer head in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood.
. . .
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis has ordered Younis remain jailed pending a mental health evaluation. Another hearing is scheduled for Dec. 21.
The police and corporations only look legal in propaganda.
Police: Houston store owner kills 3 would-be robbers
MSNBC Online — 12-17-2010
HOUSTON — A jewelry store owner shot and killed three armed men who tried to rob his business, police said.
. . .
All three men then pulled out pistols, tied up the store owner’s wife and took her to a back room, Smith said.
As they were trying to tie up the store owner, the 52-year-old took out a handgun from his waistband and fatally shot one of the suspects, Smith said. The store owner then grabbed a shotgun and shot and killed the two other suspects in the ensuring gunbattle, Smith said.
“It is a pretty incredible story. The man was clearly defending his business, clearly defending his wife,” Waters told the newspaper. “It’s amazing with all the bullets flying around in there that she wasn’t hit.”
Eisenhower rejected the military-industrial complex.
What Ike Got Right
James Ledbetter
New York Times — 12-13-2010
LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.”
The release comes just in time for the speech’s 50th anniversary next month. And so while scholars and historians use these documents to scrutinize the evolution of the speech’s famous phrase, it’s worth asking a broader question: does America still have a military-industrial complex, and should we be as worried about it as Eisenhower was?
By one measure, the answer to the first question is yes. Over the past 50 years there have been very few years in which the United States has spent less on the military than it did the year before.
This has remained true whether the country is actively fighting a war, whether it has an obvious and well-armed enemy or whether Democrats or Republicans run the White House and Congress. Despite regular expectations that the United States will enjoy a peace dividend, we continue to spend more on the military than the countries with the next 15 largest military budgets combined.
Such perpetual growth seems to confirm Eisenhower’s concern about the size and influence of the military. It used to be, he said, that armies should grow and shrink as needed; in the Biblical metaphor of the speech, he observed that “American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.”
But World War II and the early cold war changed that dynamic, creating what Eisenhower called “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” It is not a stretch to believe that this armaments industry — which profits not only from domestic sales but also from tens of billions of dollars in annual exports — manipulates public policy to perpetuate itself.
But Eisenhower was concerned about more than just the military’s size; he also worried about its relationship to the American economy and society, and that the economy risked becoming a subsidiary of the military. His alarm was understandable: at the time the military represented over half of all government spending and more than 10 percent of America’s gross domestic product.
Today those figures are not quite as troubling. While military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product has been going up as a result of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall trend since 1961 is substantially down, thanks to the tremendous growth in America’s nonmilitary economy and the shift in government spending to nonmilitary expenditures.
Yet spending numbers do not tell the whole story. Eisenhower warned that the influence of the military-industrial complex was “economic, political, even spiritual” and that it was “felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” He exhorted Americans to break away from our reliance on military might as a guarantor of liberty and “use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”
On this score, Eisenhower may well have seen today’s America as losing the battle against the darker aspects of the military-industrial complex. He was no pacifist, but he was a lifelong opponent of what he called a “garrison state,” in which policy and rights are defined by the shadowy needs of an all-powerful military elite.
The United States isn’t quite a garrison state today. But Eisenhower would likely have been deeply troubled, in the past decade, by the torture at Abu Ghraib, the use of martial authority to wiretap Americans without warrants and the multiyear detention of suspects at Guantánamo Bay without due process.
Finally, even if the economy can bear the immediate costs of the military, Eisenhower would be shocked at its mounting long-term costs. Most of the Iraq war expenses were paid for by borrowing, and Americans will shoulder those costs, plus interest, for many years to come.
A strong believer in a balanced budget, Eisenhower in his farewell address also told Americans to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.” Too many of today’s so-called fiscal conservatives conveniently overlook the budgetary consequences of military spending.
Eisenhower’s worst fears have not yet come to pass. But his warning against the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” is as urgent today as ever.
Meese at National Review believes criminal law is an inherent threat to freedom.
A Criminal Law Crisis
Edwin Meese (former U.S. Attorney General)
National Review Online — 12-13-2010
“Inherent within the power to prosecute and punish is the power to coerce and destroy. Our nation’s founding generation knew from bitter experience that the proliferation of criminal law and the unprincipled use of criminal punishment pose grave dangers to Americans’ most basic rights and freedoms.”
The Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects people’s right to self-defense against illegal actions of government.
The Second Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This was the ruling of the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller:
“It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution.”
The term “terrorist” is a statist term that legitimizes genocidal violence against those who exercise self-defense against illegal state actions.
Joseph H. Campos, The State and Terrorism: National Security and the Mobilization of Power, 2007, 140
The perception of terrorists as “inhumane” individuals has been fortified within the state’s portrayal. The image of terrorists as criminals unable to abide by the laws that govern the international community is the direct result of statist constructions which set parameters for the identity formation of terrorists as the antithesis of the state. The state, in all its authority and legitimacy, commands the realm of values that hold illegitimate violence, unregulated by the state, as illegal and monstrous. Forgrounding the pejorative aspects of terrorism implicates the actor in the unregulated, illegal action of violence and hence the actor is subsumed by the image of an illegal and monstrous nature.
Benign Empire? America forcefully annexed the state of Hawaii in what this political cartoon depicted as a shotgun marriage.
Kristof at the New York Times believes that California is about to execute an innocent man.
Framed for Murder?
Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times — 12-8-2010
That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.
Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.
This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983.
. . .
William A. Fletcher, a federal circuit judge, explained his view of what happens in such cases in a law school lecture at Gonzaga University, in which he added that Mr. Cooper is “probably” innocent: “The police are under heavy pressure to solve a high-profile crime. They know, or think they know, who did the crime. And they plant evidence to help their case along.”
. . .
This case is a travesty. It underscores the central pitfall of capital punishment: no system is fail-safe. How can we be about to execute a man when even some of America’s leading judges believe he has been framed?
Lanny Davis, who was the White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, is representing Mr. Cooper pro bono. He laments: “The media and the bar have gone deaf and silent on Kevin Cooper. My simple theory: heinous brutal murder of white family and black convict. Simple as that.”
That’s a disgrace that threatens not only the life of one man, but the honor of our judicial system. Governor Schwarzenegger, are you listening?
Psychologists are the only people with mental disorders.
The main function of psychology is diagnosing and treating mental disorders. The only mental disorders that actually exist are mental disorders of choice. People who are unethical often appear strange because they do not want to be normal. Psychology does not deal with choice. It is a predatory profession that exists for the purpose of putting people in mental wards who do not belong there. It exists for the purpose of drugging people who do not need to be treated. Psychology does this by attempting to make normal human behavior appear abnormal. One of the biggest problems with psychology is that is it defines normal personality traits, as defined by the Myers-Briggs personality type system, as mental disorders. Psychology is strange in how it operates. It is not usually concerned with whether a person is dangerous. It is only concered with whether they have a mental disorder.
The World Health Organization has a list of mental disoders that it classifies as “personality disorders.”
“Paranoid personality disorder” “Personality disorder characterized by excessive sensitivity to setbacks, unforgiveness of insults; suspiciousness and a tendency to distort experience by misconstruing the neutral or friendly actions of others as hostile or contemptuous; recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding the sexual fidelity of the spouse or sexual partner; and a combative and tenacious sense of personal rights. There may be excessive self-importance, and there is often excessive self-reference.”
(1) It is normal to dislike “setbacks” because such events may be harmful, and no normal person should like suffering.
(2) A person who “insults” other people is unethical and dangerous. It would be dangerous to forgive them unless there is evidence their behavior pattern has stopped.
(3) Being “suspicious” is helpful in avoiding harm. People do harm to other people. If one wants to avoid suffering harm, one must be suspicious.
(4) It is not improper for a person to think they are important. All people are valuable.
(5) Every person has a personal right not to be harmed. They also have a personal right to be angry if they are harmed.
“Schizoid personality disorder” “Personality disorder characterized by withdrawal from affectional, social and other contacts with preference for fantasy, solitary activities, and introspection. There is a limited capacity to express feelings and to experience pleasure.”
(1) Some people are extroverted, and some people are introverted. This disorder assumes all introverted people are mentally ill.
“Dissocial personality disorder” “Personality disorder characterized by disregard for social obligations, and callous unconcern for the feelings of others. There is gross disparity between behaviour and the prevailing social norms. Behaviour is not readily modifiable by adverse experience, including punishment. There is a low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence; there is a tendency to blame others, or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behaviour bringing the patient into conflict with society.”
(1) Some people are feminine, and some people are masculine. This disorder labels all masculine people as mentally ill.
“Emotionally unstable personality disorder” “Personality disorder characterized by a definite tendency to act impulsively and without consideration of the consequences; the mood is unpredictable and capricious. There is a liability to outbursts of emotion and an incapacity to control the behavioural explosions. There is a tendency to quarrelsome behaviour and to conflicts with others, especially when impulsive acts are thwarted or censored. Two types may be distinguished: the impulsive type, characterized predominantly by emotional instability and lack of impulse control, and the borderline type, characterized in addition by disturbances in self-image, aims, and internal preferences, by chronic feelings of emptiness, by intense and unstable interpersonal relationships, and by a tendency to self-destructive behaviour, including suicide gestures and attempts.”
(1) This personality disorder labels people who are happy and have fun as mentally ill.
“Anankastic personality disorder” “Personality disorder characterized by feelings of doubt, perfectionism, excessive conscientiousness, checking and preoccupation with details, stubbornness, caution, and rigidity. There may be insistent and unwelcome thoughts or impulses that do not attain the severity of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
(1) This personality disorder labels people are concerned about quality as being mentally ill.
Federal Government imposes criminal penalties for those who exercise their right to a trial.
The US Sentencing Guidelines direct that, if a person accepts responsibility and pleads guilty, they will receive a reduction in the amount of time that they must serve. If a defendant pleads innocent and has a trial, they must serve more time. This is a direct criminal penalty that is imposed on those who exercise their constitutional right to a trial. The commentary for this section states: “Entry of a plea of guilty prior to the commencement of trial . . . will constitute significant evidence of acceptance of responsibility for the purposes of subsection (a).”
§3E1.1. Acceptance of Responsibility
(a)If the defendant clearly demonstrates acceptance of responsibility for his offense, decrease the offense level by 2 levels.
(b)If the defendant qualifies for a decrease under subsection (a), the offense level determined prior to the operation of subsection (a) is level 16 or greater, and upon motion of the government stating that the defendant has assisted authorities in the investigation or prosecution of his own misconduct by timely notifying authorities of his intention to enter a plea of guilty, thereby permitting the government to avoid preparing for trial and permitting the government and the court to allocate their resources efficiently, decrease the offense level by 1 additional level.
The Supreme Court held in the Pentagon Papers case that state security and executive authority will not ever trump the Bill of Rights.
Below is the concurring opinions of Justices Black and Douglas in New York Times Co. v. United States.
Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.
. . .
The amendments were offered to curtail and restrict the general powers granted to the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches two years before in the original Constitution. The Bill of Rights changed the original Constitution into a new charter under which no branch of government could abridge the people’s freedoms of press, speech, religion, and assembly. Yet the Solicitor General argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men [p717] that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press. . . .” Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints.
In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.
. . .
In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of “national security.” The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to “make” a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law. [n5] See concurring opinion of MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, [p719] post at 721-722. To find that the President has “inherent power” to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make “secure.” No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time.
The word “security” is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged.
Governments illegally target people with mental illness myth.
Assertive Chinese Held in Mental Wards
New York Times — 11-11-2010
LOUHE, China — Xu Lindong, a poor village farmer with close-cropped hair and a fourth-grade education, knew nothing but decades of backbreaking labor. Even at age 50, the rope of muscles on his arms bespoke a lifetime of hard plowing and harvesting in the fields of his native Henan Province.
But after four years locked up in Zhumadian Psychiatric Hospital, he was barely recognizable to his siblings. Emaciated, barefoot, clad in tattered striped pajamas, Mr. Xu spoke haltingly. His face was etched with exhaustion.
“I was so heartbroken when I saw him I cannot describe it,” said his elder brother, Xu Linfu, recalling his first visit there, in 2007. “My brother was a strong as a bull. Now he looked like a hospital patient.”
Xu Lindong’s confinement in a locked mental ward was all the more notable, his brother says, for one extraordinary fact: he was not the least bit deranged. Angered by a dispute over land, he had merely filed a series of complaints against the local government. The government’s response was to draw up an order to commit him to a mental hospital — and then to forge his brother’s name on the signature line.
He was finally released in April, after six and a half years in Zhumadian and a second mental institution. In an interview, he said he had endured 54 electric-shock treatments, was repeatedly roped to his bed and was routinely injected with drugs powerful enough to make him swoon. Fearing he would be left permanently disabled, he said, he attempted suicide three times.
Mr. Xu’s ordeal exemplifies far broader problems in China’s psychiatric system: a gaping lack of legal protections against psychiatric abuses, shaky standards of medical ethics and poorly trained psychiatrists and hospital administrators who sometimes feel obliged to accept anyone — sane or not — who is escorted by a government official.
No one knows how often cases like Mr. Xu’s occur. But human rights activists say confinements in mental hospitals appear to be on the rise because the local authorities are under intense pressure to nip social unrest in the bud, but at the same time are less free than they once were to jail people they consider troublemakers.
“The police know that to arbitrarily detain someone is illegal. They have to worry about that now,” said Huang Xuetao, a lawyer in Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, who specializes in mental health law. “But officials have discovered this big hole in the psychiatric system, and they are increasingly taking advantage of it.”
Worse, Ms. Huang said, the government squanders its meager health care resources confining harmless petitioners like Mr. Xu while neglecting people desperately in need of help.
She and a colleague recently analyzed 300 news reports involving people who had been hospitalized for mental illness and others who had not. “Those who needed to be treated were not and those who should not have been treated were treated and guarded,” their study concluded.
Liu Feiyue, the founder of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a Chinese human-rights organization, said his group had compiled a database of more than 200 Chinese citizens who were wrongly committed to mental hospitals in the past decade after they filed grievances — called petitions in China — against the government.
He said he suspected that the real number was much higher because his organization’s list was compiled mostly from accounts on the Internet.
“The government has no place to put these people,” he said.
China no longer discloses how many petitioners seek redress, but the government estimated in 2004 that more than 10 million people write or visit the government with petitions each year. Only two in a thousand complaints are resolved, according to research cited in a study this year by Tsinghua University in Beijing.
In annual performance reviews of local government officials, reducing the number of petitioners is considered a measure of good governance. Allowing them to band together, and possibly stir up broader unrest, is an significant black mark that can lead to demotion.
Classified as Crazy
The most dogged petitioners are often classified as crazy. In an interview last year, Sun Dongdong, chief of forensic psychiatry at prestigious Peking University, said, “I have no doubt that at least 99 percent of China’s pigheaded, persistent ‘professional petitioners’ are mentally ill.” He later apologized for what he said was an “inappropriate” remark.
Yan Jun, who heads the Ministry of Health’s mental health bureau, declined repeated requests for an interview on whether petitioners were wrongly confined and other issues with the mental health system.
Yu Xin, a director of Peking University’s Institute of Mental Health and an advocate of mental health reforms, said he did not believe that the confinement of petitioners was a widespread problem.
But he criticized the absence of safeguards, saying China badly needed a national mental health law, national guidelines for involuntary commitment and better ethics training for psychiatrists. Given the current legal vacuum, he said, “Mental health professionals must be very careful not to be used by local officials.”
A decade ago, Human Rights Watch accused China of locking up dissidents and members of the Falun Gong spiritual group in a cluster of Chinese mental hospitals run by the Public Security Bureau. The World Psychiatric Association requested access to the hospitals, but China refused, and the controversy died down.
In a recent interview, Levent Kuey, the association’s secretary general, said that the organization had not taken further action because it had concluded that it was better to help China to improve its mental health system than to ostracize it.
Mr. Liu’s database suggests that petitioners are today’s most frequent victims of psychiatric abuse, outnumbering political dissidents and Falun Gong members combined.
Wu Yuzhu, a hospital administrator in the eastern province of Shandong, said in 2008 that local officials had delivered many obviously sane petitioners to him for confinement.
He admitted them, he said, because public security officers accompanied them and because his own staff felt powerless to challenge the diagnoses of government-hired psychiatrists. He added that his hospital, the Xintai Mental Health Center, was cash-strapped and welcomed government-subsidized patients.
Indeed, hospital officials sometimes cite petitioning as the sole reason for a patient’s confinement. Commitment papers for one 44-year-old man, hospitalized for two months in 2008 in Hubei Province, stated simply: “The patient was hospitalized because of years of petitioning.”
A Mental Health ‘Mess’
According to legal experts, relatives, legal guardians or local public security bureaus, which among other duties are charged with tamping down dissent, can involuntarily commit a psychiatric patient. But Ms. Huang, the mental health lawyer, described existing regulations and procedures as “a mess.”
Only 6 of China’s 283 cities have a local mental health ordinance. “There is no way for patients who are committed for treatment to complain, appeal or prosecute,” Ms. Huang’s report states. The report says that hospitals tend to grant releases only with the agreement of whoever committed the patient, although they also release patients who need continued treatment but whose bills go unpaid.
Chen Miaocheng discovered the system’s blind alleys in 1995, when his employer, with his brother’s permission, forcibly committed him to Huilongguan Hospital in Beijing.
According to medical records, doctors there diagnosed Mr. Chen as paranoid schizophrenic. After six months of treatment and medication, they decided that he no longer suffered from hallucinations and was able to care for himself, the records show.
But he was never released. After 13 years, Mr. Chen, who had repeatedly pleaded to be let out, died in the hospital of pneumonia.
This past June, a Beijing district court ruled that the company, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, did not violate Mr. Chen’s rights by hospitalizing him and that his death was not related to his confinement. Li Renbing, who represented Mr. Chen’s family, says that the court never addressed the issue of why Mr. Chen was not released.
“There should never be a situation where once you are sent to a mental hospital, you are left to rot there forever,” he said.
Mr. Li says Mr. Chen’s is an extreme case of wrongful confinement. But petitioners who end up in mental hospitals often find themselves similarly powerless.
Consider 36-year-old Jin Hanyan, who decided in 2008 after six years of failed petitions to complain directly to Beijing officials that she had been unfairly denied a government job.
On her arrival last September, she said, she and her younger sister were handcuffed, stripped of their cellphones and documents, and driven to their hometown in Hubei Province by men who described themselves as public security officers.
Four days later, Ms. Jin’s sister was committed to the city’s psychiatric hospital. Ms. Jin was confined to the psychiatric ward of the Shiyan City Red Cross Hospital — an institution with no affiliation to the International Red Cross — nine miles away.
Xue Huanying, a nurse, was not happy to see her. In a conversation secretly taped by Ms. Jin’s father, the nurse said that the government was forced to confine Ms. Jin at a cost of 5,000 renminbi, or about $735 a month, merely to stop her useless petitions.
She said petitioners were repeatedly hospitalized for that reason. “Lots of people like this! Lots!” she shouted.
“I’ve seen so many petitioners. I have never seen one who has been caught for no reason,” she continued. “I mean, you are just an average person. Just how far do you think you’re going to get by going up against the government? Right, exactly what can you do as an average citizen, a farmer working the land? Can you afford to anger those above you?”
Ms. Jin said she was forced to swallow three pills a day, given injections that made her so dizzy she could barely walk, tied to her bed and beaten.
When she complained, she said, the head of the psychiatric ward told her: “We will treat you the way officials tell us to.”
She was released seven months later after relatives hired a lawyer. “What they are trying to do is completely destroy your mind and weaken your body to the point where you go crazy,” she said. “That’s when you will stop petitioning, they hope.”
The hospital declined to comment on her case.
Petitions Produce Nightmare
The travails of Xu Lindong, imprisoned for six and a half years in two mental hospitals, began when he tried to help his illiterate neighbor, Zhang Guizhi, pursue a claim for a four-foot-wide strip of land next to her home. The two lived a stone’s throw apart in a village of about 2,000 people, surrounded by cornfields. Mrs. Zhang, who is handicapped from polio, claimed that officials had wrongly given her property to a rich neighbor.
After losing her claim in court, Mrs. Zhang and Mr. Xu began hauling a cardboard box full of documents from petition office to petition office, hoping to find a sympathetic ear higher up the bureaucratic ladder. In September 2003, Mr. Xu said, he was picked up by public security officers in Beijing. Instead of hauling him home as usual, he was driven to Zhumadian Psychiatric Hospital. He said a doctor asked him exactly two questions before admitting him: his name and address.
Mr. Xu said he spent most of the time locked in his room, lying on a thin green mattress on a iron bed. He was allowed outside only two or three times a year, he said. Hospital staff sometimes covered his head in blankets so he could not breathe, he said, and invited other patients to beat him up.
During one electric-shock treatment, he said, he bit his tongue so badly that for weeks afterward he could eat only by putting bits of food on the tip of a finger and pushing them down his throat.
Mr. Xu’s brother said in an interview that it took him four years to discover his brother’s whereabouts. He tried to hire a lawyer, he said, but lawyers shunned the case for fear of drawing the local government’s wrath.
Finally, news of the case reached journalists at a local newspaper and China Youth Daily, a national publication, which published articles about his case. Two days later, Mr. Xu was released. Four local officials were fired, including the man who served as the county Communist Party secretary when Mr. Xu was committed.
Mr. Xu is now ensconced back in his simple concrete and brick house, furnished with a broken-down wooden dresser and bed. “I hope by exposing this, society will progress,” he said, sitting on a low stool, feet clad in blue plastic sandals.
Some villagers are upset that he is talking about his experience. Spotting him on a dirt road recently, one neighbor turned her back in a grand gesture, fanning herself furiously and shouting curses over her shoulder.
“Fine, fine, you are right,” he replied, unruffled.
Local officials, on the other hand, are showering him with visits and gifts: a case of canned soft drinks, new metal-rimmed eyeglasses, an electricity hook-up to his house and about $300 in compensation for his seven years of confinement and torture.
“If the hospital’s doctors had not diagnosed him as mentally ill, this whole situation would not have happened,” said Zhang Weili, the district government’s vice director of propaganda. “I don’t want you to think this is a government that intentionally harms its citizens.”
After Mr. Xu’s case came to light, he said, officials swept the county’s records for similar instances and found none. Somehow, however, they missed Mrs. Zhang, the handicapped 65-year-old neighbor whose land dispute landed him in confinement to begin with.
Mrs. Zhang said she was forced into a different mental hospital and released a year later only after her daughter hired a lawyer. She not only never won back her small strip of land, she said, but was forced to abandon her village home for a squalid tenement to avoid harassment by her neighbors.
“I have always known that I would never win against the government,” she said. “But I am just so angry I can’t get over it. If this is the last thing I do, I will keep fighting them.”
Mr. Xu’s brother initially opposed his brother’s efforts to help Mrs. Zhang, arguing it was not his family’s business. Now he is also infuriated. “I just cannot swallow this injustice,” he said. “The government wants to protect its power. It is not here to protect its citizens.”
Still, he said, “Eventually the truth comes out.”
New York Times concludes American prisons are a failure.
The Crime of Punishment
New York Times — 12-6-2010
In 2005, when a federal court took a snapshot of California’s prisons, one inmate was dying each week because the state failed to provide adequate health care. Adequate does not mean state-of-the-art, or even tolerable. It means care meeting “the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,” in the Supreme Court’s words, so inmates do not die from rampant staph infections or commit suicide at nearly twice the national average.
. . .
Four years ago, when the number of inmates in California reached more than 160,000, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a “state of emergency.” The state’s prisons, he said, are places “of extreme peril.”
. . .
Today, there are almost twice as many inmates in California’s 33 prisons as they were designed for. The court ordered the state to reduce that population by around 30 percent.
. . .
America’s prison system is now studied largely because of its failure — the result of an expensive approach to criminal justice shaped by fear-driven ideology. California’s prisons embody this overwhelming failure.
PENTAGON PAPERS 
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