DIGG THIS

Since the Fourth of July, I’ve had the good fortune to take pleasure in many of the little things in life that make it worth living.

For example, in August I took my family on a weekend trip to New York to celebrate my brother-in-law’s 40th birthday; in September I actually got the green light from my wife to buy an old muscle car after years of merely dreaming about it; last month I braved the frigid November air with my father-in-law at the Cowboys/Redskins game in Maryland; and perhaps best of all, back in October I helped my son celebrate his first birthday.

Contrast these experiences, if you will, with those of 16-year-old St. Mary’s County, Maryland boy, John K. Edison Jr., who, since July 5, 2008, has been incarcerated in an adult jail without bond on charges that he violently raped a 12-year-old girl that same morning. He is accused of assaulting the girl sexually and beating her with a belt.

The problem, however? Edison, a minor, essentially has been confined in a government cage for more than five months over the mere accusation of rape by the alleged victim.

Extricated from his family and friends, the 16-year-old has appealed to the state for a trial in a juvenile court, only to be refused and held by the state indefinitely while prosecutors figure out how to pass this kid off as a rapist. After being forced to languish for months, Edison is finally getting his trial today (Dec. 15) in Leonardtown, Maryland.

How it all began

But first, some background. On the Fourth of July, two girls — the alleged 12-year-old victim and her 15-year-old friend — were hanging out with John Edison and his friend at Edison’s house, staying overnight until about 7:00 a.m. on July 5, at which point Edison told the girls they had to leave because his father would soon be home from work.

The boys accompanied the girls out of the house and down the street, a scene that was actually witnessed by a neighbor, who apparently has said the four kids were laughing and getting along. So imagine John Edison’s surprise when police showed up to arrest him for rape about three hours later.

According to Edison’s family’s account of the 911 tape, the 15-year-old girl initially told police that Edison raped her, but when she went to the hospital to be examined she retracted this claim and instead insisted that Edison raped the 12-year-old. Incidentally, police reports also indicate that the 15-year-old girl at one point claimed that Edison’s friend raped her, but she later recanted this as well.

John Edison’s aunt, Alice Gaskins, was also denied access to her nephew’s interrogation when she showed up at the police station on the morning of July 5. Absent legal representation and denied the presence of a legal guardian, Edison was questioned alone by police, who repeatedly contended that he had raped the girl despite Edison’s insistence that any sexual contact that took place was consensual.

The charges

According to a report in the Enterprise, a local St. Mary’s County newspaper, "Edison is accused in charging papers of pulling a 12-year-old girl into his bedroom on July 5 and having intercourse with her. He is being held without bond on charges which include second-degree rape and a second-degree sexual offense."

On the charges of second-degree sexual offense and second-degree rape, John Edison, Jr., is being charged under statute (a)(1), which states:

(a) Prohibited. A person may not engage in a sexual act with another:

(1) by force, or the threat of force, without the consent of the other;

To understand the seriousness of the charges against Edison, on these felonies alone he faces up to 40 years in prison.

However, prior to initial hearings Maryland prosecutors presented to Edison’s defense attorney, Kevin J. McDevitt, no physical evidence that a rape had occurred, nor did they provide him with statements gathered from either Edison himself or the accuser. Whether the prosecution’s failure to produce these statements was intentional or not, there’s a good reason it couldn’t provide physical evidence of rape: it didn’t have any.

According to an interview I had on September 16 with John Edison’s aunt, Alice Gaskins, the 12-year-old’s medical exam, which was conducted only hours after this alleged rape took place, revealed no evidence that a physical assault had occurred, much less a violent rape. In fact, the girl’s hymen apparently was still intact at the time of her examination. (Medical records are sealed and therefore not available for public consumption. However, they can be requested and obtained by the family of the accused.)

Indeed, the only "evidence" provided by the state during preliminary proceedings was the statement by the alleged victim that she had been raped. St. Mary’s County sheriff’s deputy James Fontana described for the court the 12-year-old’s account of events, and when McDevitt asked him if he was aware of any other witness accounts or scientific evidence against Edison, Fontana said he was not.

Moreover, McDevitt is also on record saying, "Despite my consistent requests [the state] has yet to provide me or my client with a single shred of forensic evidence that would in anyway corroborate the violent rape that the victim has alleged."

It should be made clear that, at this point in the case, the premier issue wasn’t so much whether the prosecution was necessarily justified in charging Edison; it was that the state was almost certainly guilty of violating a 16-year-old’s civil liberties by refusing bond in light of a wholesale lack of bodily evidence suggesting the 12-year-old girl was assaulted. And given that the state is arguing that Edison violently raped this girl, one would think the alleged victim would have had at least some visible bruising or lacerations at the time of her exam, especially if she was struck viciously with a belt.

Of course, I suppose the state’s treatment of Edison shouldn’t really be considered too fantastic when government authorities like District Judge Robert Riddle — who at the request of the state’s attorney ruled that Edison was to be held in an adult detention center instead of in a juvenile facility — actually argue that if a police officer merely believes an accuser’s statement, "that alone is enough evidence to proceed with a trial."

No opportunity for corruption and malfeasance there. Move along. The word of government police apparently is sent from on high.

According to a Washington Post report, defense attorney McDevitt summed up what he believes is really at the heart of his client’s plight: "Essentially what’s going on in this case is a young girl got caught sneaking out by her parents over to [Edison's] house, and she’s scared," and thus concocted a story of rape.

McDevitt also told the Post that the 12-year-old even hugged his client before leaving his house. If the latter statement is an accurate account of events — remember, a neighbor saw both girls walking amicably with Edison and his friend — this alone should be enough to debunk the 12-year-old’s accusation. After all, who would hug the person who just violently raped her?

Finally, some forensic evidence

In early October, after John Edison had already spent three months in jail as he awaited his rape trial, the state caught a break in its case when a nail scraping confirmed that Edison’s DNA was found on the 12-year-old girl.

Though negative test results obviously would have been cause for Edison and his family to jump for joy, they were prepared for the likely possibility that tests would come back positive. After all, Edison has never denied being with the girl and insisted from the outset that any sexual activity was consensual.

According to the family’s account of DNA testing, the exact type of evidence discovered on the alleged victim is unknown, but it could be anything from hair to semen to saliva. However, it’s important to realize that the presence of Edison’s DNA on the 12-year-old is hardly proof that he forced himself upon her.

Skin cells slough off our bodies constantly, so mere touching or holding hands could lead to DNA transfer. Not to engage in too much speculation, but the girl could have had her fingers in Edison’s mouth, or they could have been flirting and roughhousing like sexually curious kids are wont to do. And that’s not even considering the fact that the girl could have had her hands in Edison’s pants or performed fellatio on him.

In sum, this DNA evidence proves nothing more that the fact that Edison was with the 12-year-old on the night and morning in question, a fact he freely admits. In fact, it’s altogether likely that this evidence could work to his benefit — combined with hospital records indicating no physical or sexual abuse, sober viewers have every reason to conclude that this girl was a willing participant in the transfer of any DNA.

Moreover, given the variety of stories offered up by the girls, is it not at least a bit telling that there is no rape case simultaneously pending against Edison’s friend regarding the 15-year-old?

Considering the facts of this case, it certainly looks as if a couple of young girls who were hanging out all night with older boys were about to get caught sneaking around by their parents and decided to try to cover their respective butts by falsely claiming rape, knowing full well that their earlier interactions with the boys likely would reveal physical evidence to support their accusations.

A look at the prosecution

One need not be a legal scholar to believe that the state of Maryland is at this moment engaged in a gross miscarriage of justice as it violates the civil liberties of a 16-year-old child, who is almost certainly innocent of the charges levied against him. But to understand how easily John Edison can be stripped of his freedom, perhaps we need to examine the prosecution itself.

Meet St. Mary’s County State’s Attorney Richard Fritz. This is the same man who admitted almost two years ago that Maryland police needlessly escalated a standoff with Jamie Dean, an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD, to the point where they could justify executing him, but who nevertheless refused to bring any criminal charges against any of the officers involved.

Back in 1964 when he was 18, Fritz pled guilty along with two other men to having carnal knowledge of 15-year-old Carla Henning Bailey. The story came to light in 1998 on the eve of Election Day as Fritz was campaigning for the job of state’s attorney of St. Mary’s County when St. Mary’s Today publisher Ken Rossignol ran the headline, "Fritz Guilty of Rape," on the front cover of his newspaper.

In retaliation, Fritz teamed up with then-St. Mary’s County Sheriff Richard J. Voorhaar in the wee hours of the morning on Election Day to dispatch sheriff’s deputies across the county to buy up all the newspapers condemning Fritz. They, along with six deputies, have since been found liable for civil damages to Rossignol (case law here).

Fritz won the 1998 election with 54 percent of the vote, but the resulting brouhaha over Fritz’s high school conviction compelled Bailey to break her silence after 35 years and tell her side of the story about what she calls a "gang rape" when she was 15.

In 2000, Chris Wallace interviewed Fritz, Rossignol, and Bailey on 20/20, during which Fritz, perhaps out of some sense of guilt or attempt to clear his tainted name, made this damning statement:

"I know that, as a prosecutor myself, if a 15-year-old girl came in and told me that she was held down, raped by three different people, I’d immediately have them arrested and charged with first-degree rape."

That was eight years ago, but if John Edison is any indication, Fritz’s outlook hasn’t changed much. St. Mary’s County’s top prosecutor apparently believes, in his own warped sense of justice, that sheer accusation of rape constitutes enough probable cause to see a teenage boy banished to a jail cell, locked away from friends and family for months on end as he awaits trial.

Conclusion

When Maryland Circuit Judge Marvin Kaminetz officially denied John Edison’s request to be tried as a minor in juvenile court, he defended his decision by calling Edison a "danger to the public" as he cited two previous assault allegations against the boy, "including one where an u2018authority figure’ in the county’s school system was the victim."

Apparently allegations are now considered proof of guilt in this top-flight American justice system of ours.

Not only has Edison been confined in an adult jail without bond since July 5 on nothing more than a young girl’s statement to police, but the judge also justified the boy’s trial as an adult by holding previous assault allegations — not convictions — against him under the pretense that a rape charge is an extension of some pattern.

Worse yet, Judge Kaminetz entirely ignored the medical examiner’s report that there was no physical evidence found on the 12-year-old girl to suggest she was the victim of a violent physical or sexual assault. Let me repeat that: There was no physical evidence found to suggest the accuser was the victim of physical or sexual assault.

I’m not a doctor, but Dr. Pieter Esterhay, from the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, Md., is, and he has testified that "a listing of the girl as a victim of a sexual assault was based solely on the patient’s allegation that it occurred." (Emphasis mine.)

In no uncertain terms, John Edison Jr. has been confined in a Leonardtown jail awaiting trial on absolutely nothing more than an accusation by a 12-year-old (or 15-year-old, but who’s counting?) and a near-dictatorial decree from a state’s attorney who’s on record saying that if a young girl accuses someone of rape, by golly, he’s gonna go and find someone to charge.

Sure sounds like justice to me.

Trevor Bothwell [send him mail] maintains the web log, Who’s Your Nanny?, and he is also a contributing author to the forthcoming Ron Paul biography, Ron Paul: A Life.

Trevor Bothwell Archives

DIGG THIS

As a resident of Maryland I’ve been inundated the past couple weeks with snail mail spam urging me to vote next week for Question 2, a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that, according to the language on the ballot, would “authoriz[e] video lottery terminals (slot machines) to fund education.”

Here we go again: whoring out the kids so the state can rake in more money.

To wit, the amendment ostensibly “Authorizes the State to issue up to five video lottery licenses for the primary purpose of raising revenue for education of children in public schools, prekindergarten through grade 12, public school construction and improvements, and construction of capital projects at community colleges and higher education institutions.”

Given that I generally lead anything but a charmed life, I personally don’t make a habit of gambling. However, this doesn’t mean I have a right to prevent anyone else from entering into voluntary contract with others around a gaming table. And if I don’t have this right, neither does the state.

If Maryland wants to profit from gambling — notwithstanding the existing government-operated state lottery — it could simply lift its gambling ban and collect tax revenue from anyone looking to get into this business. Instead, however, the state seeks to establish a quasi-fascist monopoly over this proposed new gambling industry, co-opting a select few private corporations and shutting out anyone else interested in making a few extra bucks off slot machines.

Not a bad gig for those lining up at the trough to take advantage of their political clout, eh?

Apparently, Maryland will allow no more than 15,000 video lottery terminals throughout the state. However, considering the state’s only issuing up to five licenses, this means that each location could have, on average, 3,000 gaming machines. In other words, the state’s getting into the casino industry at the expense of common citizens who are prohibited from doing so.

It’s more than a little ironic that Question 2 is being raised as a constitutional amendment when Maryland’s constitution supposedly guarantees equality under the law. But there’s nothing about equality that justifies the use of force to compel taxpayers to subsidize initiatives with which they disagree. Whether one is morally opposed to gambling itself or morally opposed to state-sanctioned coercion, Maryland has no moral right to victimize citizens by forcing them to foot the bills for activities they oppose.

But back to the education angle. The state’s pitch is to claim that it will be able to keep taxes low if only we credulous folk sign off on this scam. Pardon? One would think taxes would actually have to be low in the first place in order to “keep” them that way. However, one of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s first actions upon taking office last year was to usher in $1.3 billion worth of tax hikes.

“It was hard to ask people to do more,” the smug thief alleged, “but it would have been irresponsible to not ask the people of our state to choose to make progress.”

Ask people? It’s hard to imagine a more audacious, condescending statement. I’ve never once been “asked” to “do more” for my state. I have, however, been repeatedly forced to surrender my own hard-earned money at the point of a gun.

If Maryland gets the go-ahead to establish a gambling cartel, whether or not the state will spend most of its prospective slots revenue on new schools and education programs remains to be seen, but it’s entirely irrelevant in any case. Is there any doubt at all that the state will continue to tax income, property, and consumer products as it simultaneously shovels into its coffers millions — billions? — in gambling-related revenues? If anything, the more money the state gobbles up the more it will spend on new government programs, which will demand continuous funding and only lead to more oppressive regulations as the state continues to grow and expand its reach over the rest of us.

The state of Maryland should not be in the business of gambling, or even education for that matter. Yet this debate has been framed from the outset as a tug of war between those who want to see gambling brought into the state in even greater scope (currently slot machines are allowed at select horse tracks) and those who don’t — with state oversight and regulation as the common denominator regardless.

Those who favor slots or other gaming have no right to use state violence to impose their will upon others, any more than those who happen to oppose gambling for personal or religious reasons have the right to use the state to prevent it.

Gambling, like any other commercial good or service, should be privately available to any consumer interested in contracting peacefully and consensually with any producer. The state simply has no business initiating violence against anyone to either ban or endorse it.

Sadly, however, if I were a betting man I wouldn’t put my money on the state of Maryland to uphold its moniker as the "Free State."

Trevor Bothwell [send him mail] maintains the web log, Who’s Your Nanny?, and he is also a contributing author to the forthcoming Ron Paul biography, Ron Paul: A Life.

Trevor Bothwell Archives

DIGG
THIS

Back in the
early '90s, during my sophomore year of college, I worked part time
at the university's physical plant, which was the hub of all package
shipment to and from the school. I was responsible for everything
from loading and unloading cargo and tracking inventory, to stocking
the shelves of the warehouse and making deliveries across campus.
In short, if the university received a shipment, I knew about it
because I most likely handled it.

Interestingly
enough, this fact was not lost on a couple guys who lived down the
hall in my dormitory; apparently jobs of this sort tend to bring
the scam artists out of the woodwork. One of them said he knew some
people "back home" who had access to stolen credit card
numbers, which he suggested we use to order ourselves some fancy
stereo equipment and the like. All I'd have to do, you see, is make
sure I was working the day the shipments arrived and we'd be good
to go!

For all I knew,
their plan was brilliant. Unfortunately for these fellas, however,
I had to inform them I didn't really consider myself a thief, and
that I was actually looking forward to graduating from college before
going to prison on multiple felony convictions.

The point of
this story is simple: Where there is opportunity to take advantage
of someone, there usually is someone willing to take advantage of
the opportunity.

Enter Berwyn
Heights, Md., Mayor Cheye Calvo, whose home was raided on Tuesday,
July 29 by a Prince George's County SWAT team after he picked up
a 32-pound package of marijuana from his doorstep that was addressed
to his wife, Trinity Tomsic. In an investigation that reportedly
began in Arizona, where a police dog identified the package as containing
contraband, P.G. County officers posing as deliverymen placed the
package on Calvo's porch and waited for someone to take possession.

According to
the Washington
Post, Calvo came home from work early that day, took his
two black Labs for a walk, and upon returning home spotted the package.
He brought it inside the house, set it unopened on a table, and
went upstairs to change. Calvo barely had a chance to remove his
clothes before he heard his mother-in-law screaming; SWAT officers
conducting a "no-knock" raid stormed the house, thundering
through the front door and shooting immediately, killing the family's
dogs, one of which was running away as it was shot.

Handcuffed
and terrified, Calvo and his mother-in-law were forced to sit amid
the dogs' bloody corpses as they were harassed and interrogated
for hours by the State's stormtroopers, who evidently found this
family to be such an acute threat to the community that they didn't
even make an arrest following the gruesome invasion. Instead,
Calvo, along with his wife and mother-in-law, are merely deemed
"persons of interest," which tends to indicate the police
were aware that anyone can receive a delivery unwittingly, unaware
of what's inside. But the department decided to conduct a violent
home invasion anyway, single-handedly escalating an otherwise peaceful
situation into an ultimately deadly one.

"My government
blew through my doors and killed my dogs," said Calvo. "They
thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t
think they really ever considered that we weren’t."

Mayor Calvo
and his family most certainly were treated as if they were drug
dealers, but we probably would be mistaken to assume nonchalantly
that the police never considered that they were not.

Just as I was
approached years ago by college kids hoping I would agree to intercept
stolen goods on their behalf, did Prince George's County officers
not entertain the possibility that someone in Arizona just
happened to use the Calvos' address as a marker so the intended
recipient — say, a postal clerk or deliveryman — could identify
his clandestine package while it was en route? Did they believe
it implausible that a disgruntled citizen or political opponent
simply could have set up the mayor?

If this actually
were the case, then my work here is already done; reasonable people
likely would agree that every officer involved in this outrageous
debacle should be fired on grounds of idiocy alone. The sad fact
of the matter, however, is that the State and its armed, costumed
band of tax collectors are indifferent to their targets' presumption
of innocence; the police get to play judge, jury, and (far too often)
executioner by assuming our guilt nowadays, especially if
they can claim "self-defense" along with the right to
destroy private property under the guise of waging the venerable
"war on plants."

After all,
just consult the ramblings of P.G. County spokesmen, who, as if
routine, "expressed
regret" that the mayor's dogs were gunned down. Sheriff’s
Office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellis was quick to excuse the actions
of his comrades, citing the popular refrain that deputies "apparently
felt threatened" by the dogs.

"We’re
not in the habit of going to homes and shooting peoples' dogs,"
Ellis blathered. "If we were, there would be a lot more dead
dogs around the county." Actually, Sgt. Ellis, man's best friend
virtually is an automatic
casualty of these ridiculous drug raids, even when the cops
get the wrong house or fail
to find any drugs at all.

As tragic
as it is that the police casually executed Cheye Calvo's dogs, things
could have been much worse. Should Calvo have had the temerity to
defend his property from the intruders, it's very likely that his
wife would have returned home from work last Tuesday to find her
husband
and mother
lying in their own pools of blood along with her dogs. All because
of a box of weed she may or may not have known about.

Which brings
us to the entire point of using heavily-armed police squads to serve
drug warrants in the first place, where these paramilitary units
violently force themselves upon homeowners when they least expect
it. Ever since the Supreme Court's Hudson
vs. Michigan (.pdf) case, in which the court ruled
(unconstitutionally) that evidence obtained in "no-knock"
raids is admissible in court, police essentially have been given
the green light from on high to violate our property rights at their
discretion — increasing the likelihood of botched
raids, which likewise result not only in an increase in needless
deaths of innocent, nonviolent citizens, but also of police
officers themselves.

Alas, as Cheye
Calvo learned the hard way, your home is no longer your castle.
Leaving aside my belief that all drugs should be legal — or, more
specifically, that no state should exist to regulate them at all
— there was absolutely no justification for sending in SWAT even
if Trinity Tomsic was expecting a package of marijuana to
be shipped straight to her front door. Indeed, as infuriated Berwyn
Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy explained, "You can’t tell
me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn't have been able
to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his
confidence and enter the residence."

Of course he
could have, Chief, but overkill
is the default setting for many, if not most, police departments
today. As I reported on my personal blog back in April, southern
Maryland police units have in recent years turned an otherwise peaceful
annual spring party into a police
state orgy, intimidating the populace by preemptively patrolling
Solomons Island with local, state, and federal paramilitary-type
machinery; so of course our benevolent officers will take any opportunity
to break out their toys in the name of a federally-sanctioned war
on Americans. After all, they have to put all that homeland security
funding
to use somehow, right?

If it sounds
like I don't put one bit of stock in the government's allegations
against Cheye Calvo and his family, it's because I don't (in fairness,
the police have admitted — no doubt in the attempt to stave off
a well-earned lawsuit
— that it's "possible"
the mayor was an unsuspecting recipient of the marijuana).

The P.G. County
Police Department has a long, troubled history of brutality,
corruption, and insider crime. Television reporter Andrea McCarren
told her story of
how county officers ordered her at gunpoint to drop her very dangerous
video camera before one of them dislocated her shoulder during
her arrest; seven-year department veteran Jermaine
Ayala was convicted of insurance fraud; Cpl.
Sheldon Vessels was convicted on charges of assaulting four
teenagers; for seven years, the sheriff's office hid
from auditors $45,000 it seized from a drug dealer while it
lobbied for new laws allowing the department to keep the money;
a federal jury sentenced K-9 cop Stephanie
Mohr to 10 years in prison for violating the civil rights of
a homeless man when she released her police dog to attack him after
he surrendered; Howard University student Prince C. Jones was shot
in the back five times and killed by undercover cop Carlton
Jones; and Keith
Washington, who landed a job as P.G. County's homeland security
deputy director because County Executive Jack Johnson thought he
was "mentally
tough," was sentenced to 45 years in jail this past May
for shooting two deliverymen at his home, killing one.

Perhaps most
disturbing, however, is the death of 19-year-old suspected cop-killer
Ronnie Lionel White, who was strangled
in his cell in June — sadly unsurprising given that at least
a dozen P.G. County jail officers are criminals
themselves.

Given the
aforementioned malfeasance by Prince George's County officers, it
should come as no surprise, then, that authorities didn't even
have a "no-knock" warrant when they raided Cheye Calvo's
house, despite claims to the contrary by department spokesmen at
the time of the incident. In fact, according to the Washington
Post, "a review of the warrant indicates that police
neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge
Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking," and that "Northrup
found probable cause to suspect that drugs might be in the house
and granted police a standard search warrant."

That's right;
not only was the assault on the mayor's house immoral, it was also
illegal.

Under Maryland
law, judges can grant a "no-knock" warrant in the event
police believe evidence will be destroyed or their lives will be
endangered by announcing themselves. To be sure, these caveats appear
to be ripe for exploitation, but they're nevertheless perverse;
police chiefs, cheered on by self-righteous politicians and a credulous
public, are willing to put lives in jeopardy — including, apparently,
their own officers' — all basically to prevent casual drug users
from getting high.

It's at least
reassuring to know that many Berwyn Heights residents have already
flocked to Mayor Calvo's side to express their support
for his family and to protest their county's thuggery. If you'd
like to do the same, you can begin by writing or calling any of
the Prince George's County assistant or deputy chiefs of police
listed here.

Well, any
but Police Chief Melvin High, that is; he mysteriously resigned
two days after the raid on Calvo's home. Of course, he didn't have
the testicular fortitude to admit that he was wrong to authorize
a SWAT raid on a peaceable town mayor or to continuously absolve
his officers of any wrongdoing during the past five years; he just
said, "five years is a good time," and that he "want[s]
to move forward," claiming during the press conference that
"the community today is a safer place."

Only if the
rest of the department follows you out the door, pal.

August
9, 2008

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?, and he is also a contributing author to
the forthcoming Ron Paul biography, Ron
Paul: A Life.

DIGG
THIS

If writers
want to convince their readers of the validity or solvency of their
views, the best bet usually is to provide statistical information
or numerous factual references in support of an argument. Sometimes,
however, there's just nothing like a good ol' shocking anecdote
to get the point across. So here's my story:

The other day
I picked up my son from daycare — my wife and I use a stay-at-home
mom who runs a small service from an immaculately clean house —
and his caregiver (we'll call her Laura*) told
me that a county “child care” supervisor had informed her that she’d
been written up for a supposed regulatory violation that took place
a couple weeks prior, and that she would have to meet with a child
services director to discuss disciplinary action that could potentially
threaten her licensure.

What was this
horrendous incident for which our daycare provider was reprimanded?
The day the government inspector made a surprise home visit, Laura
left a two-and-a-half-year-old boy to play by himself in a secured
area while she answered the door. Apparently this child was
“neglected” for the entire half-minute it took Laura to indulge
this twit, and she maintains the boy was in her line of sight the
entire time.

Let’s just
say I think this entire fiasco is B.S., and that's putting it diplomatically.
I know some people reflexively believe the government is responsible
for monitoring these types of businesses because parents aren’t
in other people’s homes or daycare facilities to keep an eye on
their own kids — you'll no doubt be told about that one child in
the news who was killed or abused by a home daycare provider (despite
government regulations, no doubt) — but not only do I think these
regulatory bodies are unnecessary, I don’t for a minute believe
a government agency can protect kids in the first place.

For starters,
most teachers and social workers will tell you it’s almost impossible
to remove legitimate child abuse victims from their home environment.
Because child protective service agencies usually have to announce
visits and follow many other bureaucratic twists and turns (thankfully,
I would argue, when it comes to the state), the kids who are in
the most dire situations often are the ones who never get support
anyway. In short, I believe there are kids who need help; I just
don’t think it’s the government’s job to provide it.

So what generally
happens instead? The government spends the balance of its time harassing
and terrorizing perfectly normal, caring parents and daycare providers
and their children. Just witness the 7-year-old
boy who was abducted by the state recently and thrown into foster
care for two days because his father mistakenly bought him alcoholic
lemonade at a Detroit Tigers baseball game.

If the government
wants to nitpick daycare services, perhaps it could pay a visit
to the commercial center my wife and I used for a few months previously,
only to exercise our free market right to withdraw our business
because it often violated Maryland's law
requiring at least one caregiver for every three infants. (For the
record, I don’t agree with this law because parents are perfectly
capable of determining the types of service they prefer/can afford,
but this benefit happens to be one I demand regardless.)

I wouldn’t
be the least bit surprised if these tax-funded home-checkers don’t
even have kids of their own, but if they do, they know that babies
put up all sorts of flags when they’re not happy. Without belaboring
this point too much, my son rarely ate during the day at his former
daycare and would cry all the way home after we picked him up. Whatever
the reasons, he wasn’t happy. Thankfully, Laura's quality of care
is like night and day compared to those other guys.

In fact, these
days I can’t remember picking up my son after work and seeing boogers
in his nose, dirt on his face, poop in his diaper, or a rash on
his crotch — problems all at various points when it came to the
last place we used. But apparently this matters not; it only matters
that some government parasite can show up unannounced and make a
chump case out of nothing at all.

For her troubles,
Laura now gets to worry that her license will be yanked and that
she’ll be thrown out of work; notwithstanding the fact that parents
who pay for her services will have no daycare for their kids when
she has to take the day off to fight these inane accusations, and
they could potentially be robbed of Laura's care altogether at the
hands of the state — all because of something that amounts to little
more than a power trip. Moreover, it bears asking, how well is the
state “protecting” children if it throws kids out of the hands of
a loving caregiver?

Obviously,
I hope everything works out here and that my son doesn't lose the
best daycare option my wife and I have found to date. In reality,
this charade is most likely all just part of the state’s quest to
collect yet more revenue from the sheeple, this time in the form
of a nice little fine, which will undoubtedly (and rightly) be passed
on to customers.

There is much
more we could discuss than this immediate issue alone — for instance,
I could explain why licenses, certifications, and the like are largely
worthless — but you get the idea. However, to take just this one
example, what does it matter if daycare providers are “licensed”
anyhow? Licensure is nothing more than a way for private companies
to use the state to artificially limit competition, or in this case,
for the government to fund busybodies to harass us under the pretense
that it's providing some “service.”

If but one
bona fide child abuse victim is whisked from an abuser as a result
of government regulations, it’s hailed as an amazing success and
used as fodder that simply justifies rounding up the rest of us
under the state’s umbrella of tyranny on the off-chance it'll “save”
someone else. But here’s the kicker: Any daycare provider who harms
a child via negligence or violence can be sued, either civilly or
criminally, regardless of whether she’s licensed by the state or
not. So what’s next? State-sponsored spying on grandmothers who
watch their grandchildren voluntarily during the day? Legislation
allowing government thugs to peer through our windows to ensure
kids are in their parents' midst 24/7?

Like anything
else, the market will do a better job of protecting children than
any government agency ever could. Parents free to make decisions
about their children’s welfare on a daily basis are much more qualified
to pass judgment than some government hack who comes around twice
a year.

As it stands,
we’re apparently left to watch as the state continually proves that
all it’s really good at is destroying anything that makes our lives
convenient, pleasurable, and, yes, safe.

*Laura is
a pseudonym used to protect the identity of my son's daycare provider,
who is being raked over the coals by the state for no apparent reason
understood by rational human beings. The meaning
of the name Laura is the laurel or sweet bay tree, symbolic of honor
and victory.

May
3, 2008

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?, and he is also a contributing author to
the forthcoming Ron Paul biography, Ron
Paul: A Life.

DIGG
THIS

I happen to
be a casual contributor to the Washington Examiner op-ed
page, but I have to respectfully disagree with regular columnist
Meghan Cox Gurdon, who claims in this
article that pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “hate-America” rhetoric
is Barack Obama’s problem.

To the contrary,
if anything this is America’s problem. Only in an environment where
we expect individuals to bear responsibility for the actions of
others could a political candidate ever have to apologize for the
comments of his pastor, or anyone else for that matter (and you
wonder why we have so many welfare programs).

I’m hardly
an Obama fan, but expecting politicians to pretend they have some
unctuous duty to supervise the rest of us is the very attitude that
leads to all the phoniness and self-righteousness exuded by most
of our politicians in the first place. After all, discerning anyone’s
true outlook on the issues becomes a pretty arduous task when candidates
essentially are forced by the electorate to issue endless statements
of conformance in order to placate the howlers.

Here’s the
excerpt of Gurdon’s piece
that is most interesting to me:

In Obama's
big speech Tuesday [ed. note: here],
he reminded us that he has "already condemned, in unequivocal
terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such
controversy."

That's nice,
but that it took him a year since declaring his candidacy to distance
himself from Wright's appalling beliefs gives us ground to wonder
whether, absent the YouTube fracas, he would ever have bothered
– or even noticed.

Even though
Obama has already offered his appeasement speech to his critics,
it’s apparently still not good enough because it “took him a year”
to do it. Ms. Gurdon isn’t alleging that Obama necessarily shares
his pastor’s views; she’s implying that his participation in Wright’s
church has “blunted” his ability to recognize his pastor’s “vicious
anti-Americanism.”

I don’t buy
that argument, and I don’t necessarily believe Jeremiah Wright is
anti-American. Sure, he obviously has to be a little loopy to suggest
that the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill the black man, but
he nevertheless made plenty of valid points, especially in condemning
America’s hegemony abroad, as Justin
Raimondo explained recently.

What I do believe
is that most conservatives find it very difficult, if not impossible,
to find fault with the United States. I think most of them are well-intentioned
but nonetheless nave when it comes to recognizing that our politicians
have bred contempt around the world for decades in the attempt to
impose the will of the U.S. on lesser powers.

If people have
a problem with Obama’s association with his pastor, they have every
right not to vote for the man. But I don’t believe I’m responsible
for anything other than my own personal actions, and the same should
go for anyone running for public office. Perhaps the most ironic
aspect of all of this is the insistence by conservatives that they’re
the preeminent promoters of actual “tolerance”; are we now all supposed
to associate only with those who share identical views?

What this really
all boils down to is the war party’s opportunity to smear a candidate
who at least entertains the idea of pulling the U.S. out of a worthless
war that is extremely costly, in both lives and money. Ashamedly,
I myself once fell
for the double-talk and propaganda, but what separates regular people
from most politicians is this: those of us who don’t have a vested
interest in publicly saving face or profiting personally and politically
from war are usually willing to admit when we’re wrong. It’s a bitch,
but it’s life.

On the other
hand, fanatically perpetuating
the killing of American
troops and innocent
foreigners despite current knowledge that your entire
justification for doing so has been built
on lies and deception only further enrages your enemies and
creates more. Even if some pastors have the audacity to call you
on your bullshit.

March
21, 2008

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG
THIS

Republican
presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says that if he’s elected,
you can count on him to send all illegal immigrants packing. According
to the Washington
Times, the former governor has "signed a pledge to
enforce immigration laws and to make all illegal aliens go home,"
and he reportedly plans to accomplish this through "attrition
by law enforcement."

So let me
get this straight. The guy who as governor of Arkansas fought for
welfare benefits like college
tuition breaks and advocated pathways
to citizenship for illegal aliens, now all of a sudden believes
in sending them all back from whence they came? Well, at least he’s
not pandering!

Assuming Huckabee
remains true to his word (even though he can’t win a general election,
but that’s another
story), rounding up at least 12
million illegals would be an extraordinary undertaking. Ultimately,
it is one that would fail — not for lack of trying, mind you, but
because it would eventually alienate virtually every American
citizen in the process, as well.

In no uncertain
terms, an adventure of this magnitude — one relying on the use of
government law enforcement agencies to accomplish desired ends —
would require a near-complete militarization of our cities from
coast to coast. Police officers, ICE and border control agents,
and (most likely) military units would be tasked with patrolling
our streets night and day in order to track down these lawbreakers
— we are going to remove all of them, right Mike?
— the vast majority of whom are non-violent workers who have aggressed
against no one.

To say this
would be a messy affair would be an understatement of magnificent
proportion. SWAT-style assaults and home invasions would be the
order of the day. Today’s ruthless, tyrannical drug raids would
actually look tame in comparison as government thugs went door to
door seeking out suspected illegal aliens. The right to privacy
of citizens and non-citizens alike would consequently evaporate
as property rights became a thing of the past. Chaos would ensue.
Racial tensions would intensify as primarily brown targets would
be ensnared by their primarily white captors. Protests and riots
would erupt, the merits of which would be hard to dispute.

Children born
as American citizens would be seized from their parents, automatically
rendered homeless and converted into wards of the state as a result
of such totalitarian behavior (Huckabee once seemed
to understand the demerits of such atrocious behavior). Human
beings who have come to this country to make a better life for themselves
and their families would be treated like animals as they were hunted,
captured, incarcerated, and eventually deported. And this would
merely be the fate of those who complied.

Those who
resisted, on the other hand, would not fare nearly as well. They
would end up beaten, maimed, tortured, and even killed. If Americans
can be electrocuted
and shot
by the roadside simply for arguing with the police nowadays, just
what type of treatment would befall the illegal immigrant suddenly
rendered persona non grata via this new Soviet-style diktat?

Sadly, this
issue says much less about Mike Huckabee than it does about countless
American citizens, with whom the candidate simply seeks to curry
favor this election year. Huckabee is a sleazy politician and thus
to an extent can be forgiven for behaving like one. This doesn't
excuse his most recent stance, but it's very telling that he can
get away with it. After all, he's just posturing for an American
electorate whose mainstream values are reflected in its president,
in whose office we unfortunately place so much influence that one
man can be empowered on our behalf to commit wholesale acts of violence
against fellow humans. And if we can identify enemies abroad, so
too can we apparently identify local "enemies" living
within our borders.

But make no
mistake. A mission literally to cleanse our land of unwanted immigrants
would more or less amount to a rogue experiment in state-sanctioned
domestic terrorism scarcely seen before in the United States, and
one that would almost certainly result in civil war.

All in response
to a hot-button political issue that essentially could be eliminated
by doing little more than putting an end to those attractive welfare
subsidies Mike Huckabee and so many of his fellow Americans seem
to love so much in the first place.

January
21, 2008

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG
THIS

As LRC's own
Jim Ostrowski has argued on
several
occasions,
the Republicans will lose the 2008 presidential election if they
nominate anyone but Ron Paul.

In 2006, libertarians
who were fed up with Republican excess either threw their support
behind the Democrats or stayed home on Election Day, resulting in
a wholesale
victory for the Democratic Party as it took over both houses
of Congress and a majority of governorships and state legislatures
from the GOP.

There’s no
reason to expect libertarian-minded voters to play any less significant
a role in the outcome this year, especially when they have a candidate
in Ron Paul who is continuing to gain momentum for two important
reasons: 1) libertarians finally have a candidate running on a major
ticket who represents many of their views, and 2) there is no ideological
difference between any of the leading Democrats or Republicans when
it comes to the federal government – they all believe in the
virtue of the paternalistic, centralized state; they merely differ
in how it should run our lives.

Not only will
it be the natural inclination of Americans to vote for a Democrat
after almost eight years of an unpopular Republican president, but
13
to 20 percent of self-described libertarian voters nationwide
will almost certainly either refuse to vote altogether or give their
support to an independent or Libertarian Party candidate in November
if Paul isn’t the GOP’s nominee. Given Paul's enormous popularity,
this will be more than enough to tip the scales in the Democrats’
favor, and the Republicans’ defeat will only be more lopsided if
Paul decides to run on a third-party ticket.

If Ron Paul
weren’t the only anti-war candidate in the scrum, perhaps this reasoning
would be different, but don’t expect any self-respecting libertarian
to side with Clinton, Obama, or John Edwards. Also take into account
that Paul is the only Republican candidate who appeals to young
people and liberals and independents alike, precisely the types
of voters a Republican
needs to attract in November.

By this rationale,
only Ron Paul can prevent us from hearing Hillary Clinton or Barack
Obama take the oath of office come next January. Certainly a Paul
nomination may not necessarily guarantee a Republican victory any
more than a McCain or Huckabee nomination would, but failing to
nominate Paul will surely result in a loss at the polls.

Which brings
us to an interesting question: Would the GOP prefer to have a Democrat
in the White House for the next four years if a victory would mean
a Ron Paul administration?

As if it were
a mystery, this
article by David Limbaugh confirms the motivation of today’s
conservatives: war. A “true neoconservative,” explains Limbaugh,
“favors a more energetic role for government in domestic policy
and a more proactive approach to foreign policy.” Limbaugh even
admits that the neocon may also be willing to invade countries that
don’t present a threat to the United States if it means illustrating
the “transformative, contagious power of democracy” to the world.

Against all
evidence refuting
the notion that Iraq posed any danger to us before we invaded, Limbaugh
insists that, even today, he and most conservatives still
believe that Iraq (the country as a whole, we are to assume) represented
a threat to our security before the war began. I suppose if Limbaugh
is right about anything, it’s that Iraq is at least a threat to
us today. After all, it would be hard to imagine that the Iraqis
hated us more in, say, 2001 than they do now, after almost five
years of American occupation and indiscriminate killing.

Given the fact
that the Republican Party has gone from one that rallied around
limited-government principles in 1994 to one that does anything
but in 2008, a Ron Paul triumph would obviously be a sweeping rebuke
to today’s GOP. It would effectively mark the beginning of the end
of an entitlement culture within the party that would threaten the
very security and existence of elected officials who have grown
fat and happy at the hands of special interest groups that have
solicited from them the very government largesse Paul has railed
against for years.

In no uncertain
terms, Republicans will fight tooth and nail to prevent Ron Paul
from gaining their nomination and an electoral victory, especially
when a Clinton or Obama presidency would perpetuate the cronyism
and wars they so desperately crave.

January
12, 2008

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG
THIS

Let’s get this
out in the open from the start: I in no way deserve to be mentioned
in the same breath as Thomas
Sowell. He’s an economist; I am not. He’s written dozens
of books and hundreds more articles and essays; I’ve written
a cookbook
and consider myself lucky whenever my writing runs in a national
online or print publication. In no uncertain terms, whether we’re
talking politics or academia, Dr. Sowell plays master to my pupil,
and this would be no less true even if I didn’t have a history of
virtually adoring the man.

So it seems
rather questionable for someone like me to criticize a man like
Dr. Sowell. As a libertarian-conservative, he is unquestionably
one of the foremost free market economists of the past few decades
and someone from whom I’ve learned much in the way of economics
and political ideology. However, his recent article
in the online counterpart of National Review simply leaves
me shaking my head in disbelief that such an astute political observer
would claim that none of the presidential candidates in either
major party looks “truly inspiring” as yet.

Such a comment
would certainly make sense were Ron Paul not running for president,
but it’s hard for me to understand how someone like Sowell – who
as a syndicated columnist has made a career of championing limited
government, personal liberty, and low taxes – could not only fail
to find inspiration in Paul’s revolutionary candidacy but, unbelievably,
also fail even to mention it in his latest op-ed.

Clearly no
candidate is entitled to his or her support, and I suppose the Ph.D.
may oppose the M.D. for any number of reasons, political or personal.
I just can’t seem to figure out what they might be. Sure, Drs. Sowell
and Paul differ when it comes to the Iraq war. But unless Sowell
is so ardently in favor of the indiscriminate killing that’s taken
place at the hands of the U.S. government for no good reason during
the past four-plus years, I can’t believe the many issues on which
both men theoretically agree (constitutional originalism, partial
birth abortion, the minimum wage, socialized health care, affirmative
action) wouldn’t be more than enough to win Sowell’s admiration,
much less acknowledgment.

If Sowell were
writing this piece exclusively for the neocons at NRO, most of whom
despise the anti-establishment Paul, I could understand his couching
the article within the limits of the magazine’s editorial views.
After all, this is a practice with which many libertarians are undoubtedly
(and, yes, unfortunately) familiar. Given that most newspapers across
the country fall into either the liberal or conservative editorial
camps – most libertarian writers possess political views that are
considered at least somewhat more “radical” than the platforms of
both – we libertarians understand that sticking to the issues with
which editors agree and getting published is often much more
productive than expressing contrary opinions and getting canned.
In short, libertarian ideas are better advanced through sound bites
if the alternative is complete silence.

But, realistically,
this can’t be the case here. Not only has NRO columnist John Derbyshire
already endorsed
Ron Paul on his employer’s pages, but Dr. Sowell pens his views
in his syndicated column, which runs in major newspapers throughout
the country; NRO merely picks his up. In fact, NRO editor Jonah
Goldberg has written,
if not altogether favorably, not unfavorably, of Ron Paul in his
own syndicated column, implicitly recognizing that all this chatter
about Dr. Paul has to be coming from somewhere. Even if it could
be argued that Sowell secretly supports Ron Paul but refrained from
writing approvingly of him for fear of alienating his neoconservative
readers, one would imagine he simply would have refrained from writing
such a depressing
piece entirely.

Instead, what
we get is a (dare I say?) banal, almost amateurish attempt at analysis
from an exquisitely intelligent academic and writer from whom this
reader has been conditioned over the years to expect much, much
more. Yes, Dr. Sowell is correct to note that Mitt Romney “looks
presidential” and that Mike Huckabee should be disqualified (in
theory, anyhow) for making religion an issue and breaking campaign
pledges as governor or Arkansas. But what of his assertion that
Fred Thompson “seems to have the best policy positions and the best
political track record among the Republican candidates”? This from
an economist who has traditionally considered himself more libertarian
than conservative? From someone who could, if nothing else, have
his assistants pull Ron Paul’s congressional track record rather
easily?

Dr. Sowell
closes his column by wondering why anyone would take the candidates
in both parties seriously at a time when our country allegedly faces
“huge dangers” from terrorists and nuclear weapons. To a significant
extent, he’s right about the candidates, save the one he neglects
to mention.

Which leads
me to wonder: How is one man so personally responsible for convincing
me of the libertarian ideals that have led me to support Ron Paul's
candidacy so incapable of seeing the virtues of this candidate with
his very own eyes?

December
28, 2007

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG
THIS

By now you
know that Barry Bonds has surpassed
Hank Aaron to become the greatest home run hitter in Major League
Baseball history. And you also know that this new record does not
come without controversy. Many baseball fans and regular Joes alike
have made moral arguments against Bonds and the legitimacy of his
record amid widespread allegations that he's cheated over the years
by using steroids.

Perhaps he
has. But I have a question for you: Which is more immoral? A baseball
player who may have used performance-enhancing drugs en route to
accomplishing one of sports' greatest achievements, or a federal
government that essentially created this scandal by hauling non-violent
citizens in front of Congress to testify against themselves for
allegedly doing something only to themselves? Depending on your
outlook, you might think it’s a toss-up. Allow me to attempt clarification.

If you believe
Bonds’s new record is tainted as a result of the superstar’s alleged
steroid use, you may very well dismiss his latest accomplishment
as meaningless and insignificant. Very well. As someone who doesn’t
really care one way or the other whether Bonds juiced up to augment
his play, I can’t get too worked up over this issue. Indeed, I believe
we all have much more to lose in the way of freedom as a result
of the government’s involvement in this whole steroid fiasco, than
we do in, say, the way of bruised sensibilities in the event the
record was actually taken from Hammerin' Hank artificially.

It is only
as a result of the government’s arrogant and senseless “war on drugs”
that it even deigns to believe it has the right to police Major
League Baseball in the first place, when the league is perfectly
capable of conducting its own affairs.

Insightful
folks already know that if the government can claim for itself the
power to patrol and punish voluntary behaviors and transactions
between consenting adults that result in no harm or benefit to anyone
but those immediately involved — and which, oh by the way, take
place in private facilities — then the government essentially has
the authority to regulate, manipulate, and monitor virtually any
transaction in which we freely choose to engage. If this is of less
concern to you than a relatively unimportant baseball record, then
we are all in trouble.

Ever since
the passage of the 16th
Amendment, which granted the federal government the power to
directly confiscate our income — our property — we basically
are allowed to own nothing to which the government cannot also lay
claim, at least in part. If there is a valid argument justifying
taxes levied on voluntary consumer purchases, there is absolutely
no justification for a tax that is nothing less than outright, state-sponsored
theft. Though I would be incarcerated — and rightly so — for walking
next door and taking money out of my neighbor’s wallet without his
permission, the government makes this very act routine.

So is it a
surprise that before 21-year-old Matt Murphy probably could even
call his folks to tell them he’d caught Barry Bonds’s 756th home
run ball, tax experts were already cautioning him about the fiscal
“obligations” he may very well have to the State? According to an
AP
report:

“It’s an
expensive catch,” said John Barrie, a tax lawyer with Bryan Cave
LLP in New York who grew up watching the Giants play at Candlestick
Park. “Once he took possession of the ball and it was his ball,
it was income to him based on its value as of yesterday,”

By most estimates,
the ball that put Bonds atop the list of all-time home run hitters
with 756 would sell in the half-million dollar range on the open
market or at auction.

That would
instantly put Murphy, a college student from Queens, in the highest
tax bracket for individual income, where he would face a tax rate
of about 35 per cent, or about US$210,000 on a $600,000 ball.

It should come
as no shock that Murphy will be expected to pay taxes on his earnings
in the event he sells the ball. But Barrie notes that Murphy may
be subject to taxes based on a reasonable estimate of the ball’s
value even if he doesn’t sell it. (Murphy could sell
the ball, the so-called logic seems to go, so the government may
as well take its cut now. By this rationale, the government ought
to just toss us in jail arbitrarily because we all could
commit a crime.) Only under a government that employs a tyrannical,
confiscatory tax structure could anyone be expected to pay taxes
on income he doesn't even have yet.

Hence the immoral
nature of the property tax. Not only are we taxed on goods at the
time of purchase, but we're often also taxed on the value of our
property after we've bought it. Taxing a baseball on a value that
hasn’t even materialized in the form of a sale would be the same
as paying local and state taxes every year on, for example, land
or a car — taxes which are levied almost universally (where they
exist) even if the owner has no outstanding debt on the property.
Taxing Murphy's baseball on its value would be no different than
the government taxing me every year on my lamps, televisions, toilets,
frying pans, couches, bar stools, you name it, for no other reason
than the mere fact that I own them.

Never underestimate
the State’s desire to tax us, especially when it identifies a succulent
opportunity to hit the jackpot. There is as yet no official word
from the IRS on whether Matt Murphy will be forced to pay taxes
on the value of his prize. However, if the government decides to
swoop in and steal from him simply for possessing a baseball the
market deems more valuable than another, it would only be logical
for it to tax everyone who catches a home run ball at a baseball
game.

If it seems
as if this would be irrational and excessive — even outright fascistic
and evil — that's because it would be. And though the idea's the
same, it is even more depraved for the State to steal a chunk of
our paycheck or any other property to which it believes it is entitled
simply because we own it.

All the juice
in the world couldn’t put Barry Bonds in that category of immorality.

CORRECTION:
In my
previous piece, I mistakenly wrote that Ron Paul raised
more money than John McCain from April to June. At the time, McCain
had actually raised more money, but Paul was in a better financial
position due to lack of debt. I regret the error.

August
10, 2007

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG THIS

The latest
AP-Ipsos poll has found that the leading Republican presidential
candidate is “none of the above.” According to the related Associated
Press report,
"More Republicans have become apathetic about their options
over the past month," during which time the number of those
polled who are indecisive has jumped from 14 to 23 percent.

Maybe this
is sheer speculation on my part, but I’m guessing that “none of
the above” is actually a guy by the name of Ron Paul.

That's right,
the candidate who's cultivated widespread grassroots support –
he relies primarily on speaking engagements, appearances on counter-culture
television shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report,
and Internet resources like Facebook, MySpace, and Meetup to get
his message out – is still struggling for inclusion in many traditional
public opinion surveys. After all, how well can you be expected
to poll when even pollsters in your home state refuse
to put your name on most ballots?

Clearly it’s
irrational to assume Paul is drawing all the votes of those who
answer “other” or “none of the above” on these surveys, as many
truly may be undecided. Still, Ron Paul actually raised
more money from April to June than John McCain, whose campaign
admittedly is tanking fast and hard, but that nevertheless means
Paul is beginning to build ever-important name recognition. What’s
more, Paul is blowing
away his Republican counterparts in the polls of people who
have actually heard him speak.

What does
all this mean? Perhaps very little, as we’re still well over a year
away from Election Day and polling is essentially meaningless at
this point. But one thing the "Ronvolution" supporters
can count on is this: Today's top-tier Republican candidates are
going to fade into the night as the election nears. Voters will
have months on end to listen to Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, and
McCain flip-flop, prevaricate, and generally make fools of themselves
as they battle each other, while Ron Paul will quietly continue
to gather momentum by consistently preaching the virtues of liberty
and reiterating anti-Iraq war sentiments the vast majority of the
population already
endorse.

It's no secret
that Ron Paul has been the victim of a widespread media blackout,
due largely to his unpopular views among the intelligentsia as they
relate to decreasing the scope of the federal government, with which
those on both the left and right seek to curry favor. Media conglomerates
may have their particular political biases, but there's really only
one thing that matters at the end of the day, and that's a bias
toward making money. Big-name candidates generate big-time campaign
contributions, which translate into lots and lots of revenue for
media outlets in the business of selling ad space and airtime.

So, do these
difficulties mean Dr. Paul faces an uphill slog to the White House?
You betcha. They do not, however, mean that his campaign can't or
won't continue to gain momentum nationwide. Paul's growing support
despite his virtual media inattention may be indicative of just
how strong his movement really is, not to mention contributing to
this perceived Republican apathy toward his mainstream opponents.

I believe Ron
Paul has revitalized hope in many Americans, from liberals to conservatives
who are sick and tired of imperialistic and paternalistic governance,
and perhaps even in people who had already decided they were done
voting in presidential elections. It’s only a matter of time before
the media will be forced to acknowledge Paul’s incremental victories,
and once that happens, we may no longer have to wonder who “none
of the above” really is.

July
20, 2007

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG THIS

I'm not
hurting anybody!
I'm
in here by myself!
Tell your men to back off!
Why are you surrounding me?

These are some
of the final (paraphrased) pleas heard on a police audio recording
of army reservist and Afghanistan war veteran James Emerick Dean,
who was shot and killed by a Maryland State Police sharpshooter
during a standoff on December 26, 2006. The despondent Dean, who
had just received orders of deployment to Iraq, simply wanted to
be left alone, barricaded inside his childhood home to contemplate
suicide. The State, however, had other ideas.

Jamie, as he
was known by his friends and family, was 29.

But let's rewind
a bit, shall we?

Post-traumatic
stress

Jamie Dean
voluntarily enlisted in the army in 2001 and served 18 months in
Afghanistan between 2003 and 2005. After he returned home to Southern
Maryland in the summer of 2005, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the carnage and horror he
had witnessed during combat.

According to
a recent report
released by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, "At least
one-in-three Iraq veterans and one-in-nine Afghanistan veterans
will face a mental health issue, including depression, anxiety,
or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," and "PTSD rates for
Iraq veterans are already higher than the rates recorded among veterans
of Vietnam."

Perhaps even
more astonishing, a different study has found that of those vets
who have received a mental health diagnosis, more
than half exhibit two or more mental health disorders.

By any reasonable
account, Jamie was probably in the majority. He began to drink heavily
and suffered from nightmares and night sweats, all among the more
prevalent symptoms
of PTSD. He could naturally be moody, but the disorder only seemed
to make his temperament worse. Despite the pain, Jamie generally
kept his feelings bottled up even around his family members, who
never quite grasped the severity of his illness even as it metastasized
into suicidal impulses.

Jamie was prescribed
a handful of medications for the PTSD, but there was one thing in
his life that seemed to help him cope better than anything else.
On August 16, 2005, he went to Toots' Bar in Hollywood, Maryland
with his father Joseph. That's when he met Muriel, the girl who
would become the love of his life.

Jamie and
Muriel

It
didn't take Muriel long to fall in love with Jamie, the man who
always made her laugh, spent almost every day with her, would call
her every morning to sing to her and tell her how beautiful she
was, and would eventually propose to her on Valentine's Day 2006
over a candlelight dinner. Jamie and Muriel were married on August
26, 2006.

"To look
at his face, Jamie looked like a hard, mean man," Muriel tells
me, "but he was gentle and loving, the most caring man. The
PTSD made him have the moods he had, but that didn’t matter to me
because being with Jamie was all I wanted to do."

Muriel doesn't
pretend her marriage to Jamie was all hugs and kisses, however.
They had their share of arguments (usually over the drinking), and
they struggled together through Jamie's emotional ups and downs
and nightmares. On several occasions Muriel recalls waking up in
the middle of the night, herself soaking wet as the result of Jamie's
sweats. But like most marriages, the good far outweighed the bad.
In large part Jamie was happy; he loved to hunt and ride his four-wheelers
around the family farm. Most of all, though, he just enjoyed being
with Muriel and spending his time with her two children (his new
stepchildren) and their dogs.

And then it
happened. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Jamie received orders
to Iraq. He was to be in the war zone by the New Year. Almost immediately
Jamie's attitude changed, and he was sent into deep depression.
He would tell Muriel he felt like he was going crazy, his drinking
became much worse, he was constantly angry, and he would stay out
late until he knew Muriel was in bed for the night.

"He was
pulling away from me, the pain of which I can’t explain," recounts
Muriel. "My counselor says that is their way of making it easier
to leave when they have to deploy."

A few days
before Christmas, Jamie made Muriel dinner and gave her one half
of a necklace he'd bought for each of them. "I wear one half
of a heart and he wore the other half that says, u2018God watch over
me and thee while we are absent one from the other,'" Muriel
explains. "Jamie told me that, no matter what happened, we
would always be together as long as we had these necklaces."

On the night
of Jamie's birthday, December 23, 2006, Muriel asked her husband
what bothered him the most about going to Iraq. He responded, "Leaving
you and the life we have." Jamie was philosophically opposed
to the war in Iraq, but he told Muriel that going would be easy
if he didn't have her.

On Christmas
Eve, Jamie told his uncle, Robert Purdy, that 2006 was sure to be
his last Christmas with the family, that he kept having nightmares
about dying in Iraq. "I tried my best to assure him that he
was wrong and that he would be all right," Purdy recalls. "Then
he hugged me good-bye and told me he loved me. I should have noticed
this odd behavior but I thought that he was just down with the depressing
letter calling him back to duty."

That
night Jamie upset Muriel by getting really drunk after he promised
he wouldn't, so the two weren't speaking by Christmas morning. Jamie
left to go to his father's house but returned later in the day so
he and Muriel could exchange presents. Despite their feud, Jamie
had still taken the time to hide all of Muriel's gifts around the
house so she'd have to go on a scavenger hunt to find them.

But then, merely
hours later, Jamie flew into a tirade. Whether brought about by
the impending deployment date during the holidays, the fear and
frustration accompanying Jamie's imminent departure from his wife,
or the cumulative effects of an emotional tidal wave that flooded
reality with an illness he simply couldn't overcome, Jamie lost
it and proceeded to trash his house. He broke glasses, hit furniture,
and told Muriel the next time she saw him he'd be in a body bag.
He angrily smashed a large mirror that hung above the couch before
storming off again to his dad's place in the woods.

The standoff

According to
the death investigation by St. Mary's County State's Attorney Richard
D. Fritz, who notes that it is the responsibility of his office
to "[make] sure that our police are above reproach in their
relations with our citizens," on the evening of December 25,
2006, Jamie Dean called his sister at approximately 9:10 p.m., telling
her he "just can't do it anymore." Hearing a gun shot
and fearing her brother had just committed suicide, Jamie's sister
made a "check the welfare" call to 911.

Shortly after
10:00 p.m., St. Mary's County Deputy Sheriff Morley approached the
home of Joseph Dean, where a despondent Jamie Dean was barricaded
alone inside. Morley proceeded to tell Jamie to come outside so
he could see that he was all right. Agitated and intoxicated, Jamie
indicated he would comply but ultimately refused to do so.

During this
timeframe, Maryland State Trooper Sughart made contact with Muriel,
who informed him about Jamie's military status and mental issues,
and indicated that there were up to 12 shotguns and possibly a black
powder gun in the house. Surrounding residents were soon evacuated
from the area, while Sgt. Johnson of the St. Mary's County Sheriff's
Department contacted Jamie, who told Johnson to leave him alone,
that he was not going to come out of the house, and that he would
hurt anyone who tried to enter.

At 10:45 p.m.,
the St. Mary's County Emergency
Services Team (SWAT team) took
up perimeter positions around the house (Fritz refers to this
as the Emergency Response Team in his report). They were soon joined
by the Calvert County and Charles County Emergency Services Teams.
Police attempted to negotiate with Jamie Dean for several hours,
during which time they disabled Jamie's cell phone and routed the
residence phone to the negotiator's telephone number.

Instead of
waiting for Jamie either to exit the property or pass out from exhaustion
and alcohol intake, the county police units began to fire chemical
munitions (tear gas canisters) into the house at approximately 4:19
a.m. on December 26. Though the state's attorney's report states
that between 40 and 60 canisters were fired, the actual final count
was around 85. After being fired upon, Jamie exited to the rear
of the house around 4:33 a.m., raised a shotgun into the air, and
fired in the direction of a police car located at least 50 yards
away. State's Attorney Fritz noted that there was little evidence
to establish whether the shot was fired directly, or if pellets
“rained down” around police cars. An officer also remarked, “The
windshield of the vehicle sustained numerous chips that were barely
visible.”

By
11:10 a.m. on December 26, the Maryland State Police had arrived
on the scene and begun to deploy personnel and resources. For the
next hour or so, county and state police attempted negotiations,
deploying throw phones and engaging in sporadic telephone conversations.

At 12:25 p.m.,
a negotiator made telephone contact with Jamie, who stated, "I'm
going home," and indicated that he may be coming out. However,
it was at this point that the batteries in the police cell phone
died. Then, mysteriously, at 12:45 p.m. power was cut to house,
and a state police Peace Keeper vehicle deployed chemical munitions
in front of the house while a Calvert County armored vehicle did
the same in the rear of the residence.

At 12:47 p.m.,
the Peace Keeper vehicle was located between 8 to 15 feet from the
front of house, continuing to dispense tear gas. The driver’s side
door was facing the front door of house when Jamie partially opened
the storm door. According to several reports, Jamie raised a long
gun and pointed it at the Peace Keeper. At this point, state police
sharpshooter Sgt. Daniel Weaver fired one round from approximately
70 yards away, striking Dean in the left side. By 12:52 p.m., Jamie
Dean had no life signs.

Response
to investigation

The shooting
of Jamie Dean can only be described as an atrocity, an appalling
abuse of authority by government agents who seem intent to prove
that we aren't to do anything without their oversight, apparently
even kill ourselves.

Jamie Dean
held no hostages, was not a fugitive, posed no threat to anyone
but himself, and, above all else, committed no crime that warranted
harassment by police, certainly not SWAT teams. SWAT units are comprised
of police officers trained in tactical skills who have one goal:
to defuse existing violent situations, with deadly force
if necessary. Their duties most definitely do not include needlessly
creating or escalating nonviolent ones. (This seems to be becoming
a disturbing trend, however. Only a few weeks ago, SWAT teams in
upstate New York surrounded a house occupied by Iraq war veteran
Eric
Podosek, who got drunk, told someone he was depressed, and passed
out. Thankfully, Podosek surrendered to police before the State
could execute him.)

State's Attorney
Fritz has ruled that the shooting of Jamie Dean itself was "justified,"
inasmuch as the sharpshooter perceived a mortal threat to his fellow
officers at the time Jamie raised his weapon. Indeed, the police
have just as much right to protect themselves as we do. However,
to his credit, Fritz also concluded in his report that the tactics
employed by the Maryland State Police "can best be considered
as progressively assaultive and militaristic in nature," were
"overwhelmingly aggressive," and were "not warranted
under the circumstances of the facts present in the case."
In other words, the situation never should have been escalated to
the point where shooting Jamie Dean was necessary.

After all,
Fritz emphasized that because the police had time and location in
their favor (Jamie was on a secluded family farm surrounded by woods
where threat to innocent passersby “was slight to non-existent”):

"[T]here
was absolutely no need to push an extraction of Mr. Dean.
This was not a hostage situation, where an innocent civilian was
being threatened by Mr. Dean; to the contrary, it was a barricade
by a single individual, who was demanding to be left alone.”

Specifically,
Mr. Fritz also criticized the misuse of the state police Peace Keeper
vehicle, which is susceptible to many types of ammunition. While
it has many practical law enforcement uses, it is not intended for
use as a siege vehicle against individuals firing unknown weapons
of an unknown caliber. While this vehicle was in use, a Charles
County armored vehicle was in a standby mode, positioned to the
left of the residence.

Fritz condemned
the state police not only for placing every member of the emergency
services team in danger by using an inappropriate vehicle to approach
the house, but also for needlessly creating a situation that would
give a sniper no choice but to use lethal force if Dean exposed
himself as he did.

The Maryland
State Police arrived on the scene at 11:10 a.m. on December 26.
Jamie Dean was dead by 12:52 p.m. that same day. Given that only
one hour and forty-two minutes had elapsed between the time
the state police arrived and the time they shot Jamie, one has to
wonder if the use of a vehicle susceptible to ammunition was intentional,
a part of some perverse plan to justify a “quick kill” of their
target. Amazingly, if the tear gas didn't get Jamie to come out
of the house, the final phase of the State's three-tiered plan was
to blow a hole in the side of it. Could one honestly contend that
the police were not determined to kill Jamie Dean?

While Fritz’s
report is sufficiently and appropriately critical of the Maryland
State Police for its actions and poor decision-making, the state’s
attorney inexplicably lends no narrative in his report to the equally
unacceptable actions of the county police departments. After all,
it must be noted that Jamie Dean never fired his weapon until
he was fired upon by county authorities dispensing tear gas
well before the state police arrived. This was initially authorized,
it is assumed, by St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron, who was
eventually joined by state police Lt. Mark Gibbons, the on-scene
commander.

Moreover, Jamie
Dean merely discharged his shotgun into the air, not directly at
the police, which caused the shotgun pellets to rain down on one
or more police cars with the velocity of a bird dropping. Certainly
this may have been a lamentable act, but one that was entirely justified
given that the police initiated the use of force. Moreover, Dean,
a trained marksman, was in possession of at least one rifle and
could have begun picking off the cops if he truly wanted to. The
police were well aware that they were dealing with an emotionally
traumatized individual and must be accountable for unnecessarily
provoking him.

To be sure,
the firing of the tear gas marks the most pivotal point in the timeline
of events, as it defines the moment where the police go from protecting
and serving to tactically assaulting Jamie Dean’s civil liberties.
Why this is apparently undeserving of the state’s attorney’s utmost
criticism as well is anyone’s guess, and raises the question of
whether Mr. Fritz is trying to cover for his county's sheriff’s
department.

Given the fact
that police needlessly escalated a situation where no life (other
than Jamie's) was initially in danger, the only reasonable deduction
here is that Jamie Dean was slaughtered gratuitously and in outrageous
fashion by government agents of Maryland.

At the beginning
of this entire episode, Deputy Morley's job was to check Jamie Dean's
welfare. Instead of merely confirming that Jamie was suicidal and
leaving well enough alone, the police surrounded him anyway knowing
full well he wanted no business with them. Without provocation,
the police initiated force by firing dozens of tear gas canisters
at Jamie. And when he did what any other normal human being would
have done in that situation and retaliated, the police simply seized
on this and used it as an excuse to further antagonize Jamie Dean
and ultimately kill him.

Murder or
manslaughter?

So where do
we go from here? The state's attorney has submitted his death investigation.
He has admitted beyond question that, at the very least, the actions
of the state police were an egregious assault on an innocent man's
civil liberties. Though he has given no indication of doing so,
the only appropriate course of action at this point is for Mr. Fritz
to bring manslaughter charges against those persons on the respective
county and state police forces who made command decisions that directly
resulted in the death of Jamie Dean.

While it could
well be argued that the Maryland State Police made premeditated
decisions that only could have caused Jamie's death, murder charges
likely would be over the top given that the police had a tactical
plan that at least began with peaceful negotiation. However, there
is every reason to believe that St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron
and Maryland State Police Lt. Mark Gibbons could rationally be accused
of manslaughter as a result of their collective negligence.

Indeed, Sheriff
Cameron all but admitted
that his department had no business assaulting Jamie when he stated,
"[Dean] said he was not going to come out [and] that he intended
to commit suicide." And state police Col. Thomas E. "Tim"
Hutchins should be fired on grounds of idiocy alone for having the
audacity to claim that Jamie Dean's killing was "a tragedy
that was not of our doing," and that u2018u2018[i]t was Mr. Dean who
decided" his own fate.

Unfortunately,
given the double standards that exist between agents of the State
and the rest of us commoners who are expected to merely conform
and comply, I won't hold my breath waiting for Jamie Dean's killers
to be brought to justice. How that makes them "above reproach"
is beyond me.

Resources:

James Emerick
Dean Death Investigation:

• Dean
  Death Investigation, Richard D. Fritz, St. Mary's County (Md.)
  State's Attorney

PTSD-related
suicides among "war on terror" vets:

• Seventh
  Iraq War vet kills himself, Mark Benjamin, UPI, March 16,
  2004
• Returnees
  With PTSD At Risk Of Suicide In Cases, Stephen Spotswood,
  U.S. Medicine, September 2005
• Douglas
  Barber Commits Suicide, David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org,
  January 18, 2006
• 4
  Iraq veterans in Japan commit suicide, Agence France-Presse,
  March 10, 2006
• Mother
  of Iraq War Vet Who Committed Suicide Flies Flag Upside Down,
  Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, July 18, 2006
• VA
  system ill-equipped to treat mental anguish of war, Chris
  Adams, McClatchy Newspapers, February 9, 2007
• Helena
  mourns Iraq veteran who committed suicide, Martin J. Kidston,
  Helena Independent Record, March 10, 2007
• Suicide
  Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing, Robert Bryce,
  Texas Observer, March 16, 2007
• Veterans
  Have Greater Suicide Risk, AP, May 10, 2007

Treatment available
for PTSD:

• Treatment
  Available to Troops Suffering From Combat Stress, Sgt. 1st
  Class Doug Sample, American Forces Press Service

June
2, 2007

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

DIGG THIS

For decades
now, the federal government has been hitting us in the wallet in
order to subsidize the production of ethanol — alcohol derived from
corn that is now being added to gasoline for a variety of reasons,
which include claims that it is better for the environment than
gasoline and helps to reduce American dependence on foreign oil.

But if you’re
a boat owner, there’s a good chance you’ve been feeling another
big side-effect of these ethanol appropriations. As in, your boat's
engine won’t start.

At least that’s
the case with me.

It’s bad enough
that taxpayers are forced to help foot the bill for the production
of ethanol, but if you’re like me, you just may be perversely funding
the destruction of your own property as well.

The Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel reported the potentially devastating effects
of ethanol on boat engines in an article back in August, explaining
that the gasoline substitute can be most harmful to boats that have
fiberglass fuel tanks and carbureted engines. Specifically, "problems
include erratic engine performance from water and contaminants trapped
in boat fuel systems."

According to
the Mercury Marine website, the fuel-system components of its engines
"will withstand up to 10 percent ethanol content in gasoline."
However, even gasoline with this ethanol formulation has been found
to cause a chemical reaction with fiberglass where resins are drawn
out and carried into the engine; it also tends to break down hoses
and gaskets in motors that are not made with ethanol-compatible
material, which leads to clogged fuel filters and carburetors, leaks,
or engine damage.

I purchased
a 2005 17-foot Boston Whaler with a 90-horsepower Mercury four-stroke
outboard engine last summer, and this past August I had to have
my carburetors repaired after only about 20 hours of use on the
motor because it wouldn't start.

My wife and
I wanted a boat that was relatively low-maintenance, one that would
allow us to just get in it and go whenever we felt like it. To the
contrary, we couldn't even get the engine started in November in
order to pull the boat out of the water to winterize it. That means
that in only a few months time — and after running the gas line
dry following each use since the carburetor work, per recommendation
of the mechanic — the engine again failed to start.

Since my problems
began, I've discovered that Mercury's 90 four-stroke motor, in particular,
has been causing headaches for many other boat owners as well, which
may indicate that this engine contains some design characteristics
making it even more susceptible to ethanol issues than other motors
happen to be. Nevertheless, the point remains that ethanol is wreaking
havoc for many boaters — havoc resulting from government regulations
and incentives aimed at increasing the production and use of gasoline
formulated with ethanol.

Worst of all
— aside from coercive government mandates that impose all sorts
of costs on citizens — there is evidence suggesting that this ethanol
push is more or less intended to be one big handout for American
corn farmers, and, by extension, ethanol manufacturers.

According to
the non-partisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers
for Common Sense, “the United States government has granted
a multitude of tax incentives and subsidies to promote the growth
of a domestic ethanol industry” since 1978. Indeed, the group claims
that “ethanol has neither reduced dependence on foreign oil nor
significantly helped to reduce pollution,” and that taxpayer subsidies
“serve no other purpose than to artificially prop up the corn and
ethanol industry.”

Journalist
Robert Bryce has also written in Slate
that ethanol will not reduce oil dependence (as environmental and
ethanol lobby groups like to claim), arguing that it will lead to
higher gas prices, requires more fossil energy to produce than
it actually contains, and provides only two-thirds the energy
of gasoline. According to Mr. Bryce, “Between 1995 and 2003, federal
corn subsidies totaled $37.3 billion."

Incidentally,
Bruce Stockman, director of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association,
has accused
Mercury Marine of having an “anti-ethanol agenda.” I suppose I would
too if the government was artificially increasing my costs and potentially
helping to destroy my business by pushing fuels that damaged my
product.

What is undeniable,
however, is that Mr. Stockman most certainly has a pro-ethanol agenda.
The only difference, of course, is that Mercury isn’t presently
in business at the expense of American taxpayers.

December
28, 2006

Trevor Bothwell
[send him mail] maintains
the web log, Who's
Your Nanny?

What does
a cool ten grand per student get you nowadays in a public school?
If you happen to have a kid at Poplar Tree Elementary School in
Chantilly, Va., there's a good chance it will help to buy her
a lesson in the virtues of communism.

Teachers
at Poplar Tree in Fairfax County have been known to collect students'
personal school supplies at the beginning of the year and put
them into a "community box," from which they dispense
the supplies for the remainder of the year to all students as
their needs arise. Sound familiar? It should. Poplar Tree is hardly
the only school where this absurd practice has taken place.

One of the
most exciting times of the year for kids who actually like going
to school used to be picking out all those brand new supplies
at the end of summer vacation. But what's the point when your
teachers don't even let you keep the pencils, crayons, and notebooks
you've purchased for yourself? One of the first lessons students
are apt to learn in today's public schools is that it's just fine
for someone else to pilfer their belongings, so long as it takes
place under the guise of "compassion," "equality,"
and "sharing." So much for your kid learning the value
and importance of private property rights.

Of course,
this really shouldn't be too surprising. For years now public
schools have championed the merits of "cooperative learning,"
where students are grouped into mini-communes of four or five.
The idea here is to encourage cooperation between peers, where
the brighter students in the group are expected to facilitate
the learning of those less academically adroit.

Aside from
the sheer foolishness of expecting any individual student to be
responsible for the learning of anyone but himself, "cooperative"
methods of learning discourage independent thinking in addition
to encouraging misbehavior and cheating. Indeed, these instructional
methods are invented by the very same teachers who believe grading
papers with red ink is "pretty frightening" for kids,
at least according to Sharon
Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at JFK Middle
School in Northampton, Mass.

Looking
for some high school hijinks? The Washington
Post has reported that a geometry teacher at Oxon Hill
High School in Prince George's County, Md., has been removed from
instructional duty for administering a math test containing word
problems referencing drugs and weapons. A sample from the "joke"
exam: “Jose has 2 ounces of cocaine. If he sells an 8 ball to
Antonio for $320 and 2 grams to Juan for $85 per gram, what is
the street value of the rest of his hold?” The Post also stated
that the unnamed teacher even asked students to write their "gang
name" on the test.

Thankfully,
the school district had the presence of mind to reassign this
teacher. But what are we to make of a district that hasn't summoned
the moral fiber to fire a teacher who deems it appropriate to
inflame racial stereotypes at a school with an 85% black population?
Don't be surprised when the "Bloods" and "Crips"
start to displace the "Bluebirds" and "Robins"
reading groups of yesteryear.

Perhaps most
outrageous, Shiba Pillai-Diaz, a middle school teacher at Crossroads
South Middle School in Monmouth Junction, N.J., was recently ordered
out of her school by her principal for hanging a photo of President
and Mrs. Bush on a bulletin board next to other U.S. presidents.
According to WABC
news, "Pillai-Diaz ultimately removed the entire bulletin
board and [said] School Principal Jim Warfel told her she disrupted
the school with her u2018inflammatory politics'" before being
shown the door.

Each of these
illustrations really demonstrates all you need to know about the
mentality proliferated in today's public schools. Administrators
and teachers are so consumed by left-liberal notions of absolute
"equality" that they find nothing wrong with confiscating
your kid's property – unless it means preventing students from
disrupting lectures. The New York Times has written that
public schools have practically given up on attempting to enforce
rules prohibiting students from having cell phones in class. (The
jury's still out on whether or not schools will continue to try
to prevent kids from having oral sex in stairwells.)

Moreover,
government schools are so committed to "non-judgmentalism"
that they can barely bring themselves to reprimand unprofessional
teachers – unless, of course, those teachers are guilty of recognizing
the one man responsible for dumping billions of dollars into public
school coffers. Figure that one out.

In short,
whereas a demagogue like Jim Warfel purports to proclaim fairness
in the classroom by preventing teachers from displaying a poster
of a Republican president unless his Democrat challenger accompanies
it, he merely reveals the agenda of the liberal education populace
– the only "inflammatory politics" allowed in public
schools these days are those that appeal to the left.

It goes without
saying that there are many good public schools in this country.
The problem is, there are far too many bad ones. Again, we're
only two months into the school year. Stay tuned for more lunacy.

October
22, 2004

Trevor
Bothwell [send him
mail] is editor of The
Right Report.com and is a Townhall.com book reviewer.