Arizona’s state government just passed their SB 1070 immigration law because they decided they have an immigration problem. Arizona’s SB 1070 won’t fix a single illegal immigration problem in the United States.
None. Zero. Zilch.
What will fix immigration problems in the United States, specifically the sort they’re after in Arizona? I believe they want to stop “illegals” from coming to their state. If that’s the case, then fine. A state is free to pass any law that their people want, as long as it doesn’t conflict in any way with the United States Constitution or Federal law. Maybe SB 1070 meets those thresholds – or maybe it doesn’t. Time and the courts will decide that. What will fix the problem the Arizona government perceives, permanently?
Criminalize – and by criminalize, I don’t just mean ‘fine’ – I mean, criminalize, as in with a felony-level penalty, the hiring of a single “illegal”, “undocumented worker”, or anyone who can’t demonstrate conclusively that they are indeed legally authorized to work in the state of Arizona. How criminal should it be? If I’m a business owner, be it a farmer, a manufacturer, or a homeowner that needs yard work done, and I hire an “illegal”… I go to jail.
Arrest me. Fine me. Prosecute me.
If guilty, I now have a felony conviction. Yes, a FELONY. The criminal convictions you have to report for the rest of your natural life; the criminal convictions that may cost you the right to vote; the criminal convictions that can cost you your own job or career. Prosecute me ruthlessly if I’ve hired an “illegal”. No sane person in those conditions would even think about hiring someone they shouldn’t. There will be, literally, no market for these workers in Arizona then, and they will go elsewhere. Problem solved for Arizona.
But that would require making Americans responsible for what they’ve done themselves: brought these illegal immigrants to Arizona. If American employers weren’t hiring the immigrants and creating their shadow economy, why would they even come here? Yes, the immigrants are at fault. They snuck into the United States: they didn’t come in legally. The American EMPLOYERS are 100% equally at fault, however. SB 1070 does nothing to fix this. Unless Arizona makes employers face criminal penalties – and enforces the same – to stop the immigrants from coming, why would they stop? It’s a nonsensical idea.
But this idea will never happen, because it wouldn’t just tip over the socioeconomic and political apple cart in Arizona: it would set the cart on fire and make it explode.
For all those people who say that gay and lesbian couples don’t need to be able to ‘marry’ to have the same legal protections and rights as us hetero couples, consider the abominable horror that has happened in Sonoma County, California. These men had their legal rights and wishes ignored based on what the lawsuit charges. If only they’d been able to marry, like all people are in civilized nations. Proposition 8 and sociopathic hate still haunt California and destroy lives.
Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.
One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.
What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.
Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property.
We can only hope it’s a matter of time until the news media picks it up and runs with it. Even their local newspaper–which, coincidentally, is owned by the New York Times–isn’t covering it either yet for some reason.
On or about June 28 and continuing through August 2008, Defendants ACV, DILLINGHAM, COUNTY, LIEDHOLM, STAGG-HOURIGAN, BREWSTER, and others and each of them, did not allow Plaintiff GREENE access to [Harold Scull], his partner of 25 years, who was terminally ill. On or about June 28 and continuing through August 2008, Defendants ACV, DILLINGHAM, COUNTY, LIEDHOLM, STAGG-HOURIGAN, BREWSTER, and others and each of them, falsely imprisoned Plaintiff GREENE, keeping him behind a locked gate at Defendant ACV’s premises and restricting and limiting his movements and communications with his friends, family, and the general public…. Plaintiff was put in fear of physical harm, was and felt intimidated and attacked, and remains fearful that he will be chased down and locked up again.
On or about August, 2008, Defendants MICHAEL BREWSTER and KAREN STAGG-HOURIGAN, as employees of the COUNTY acting in their official capacities… did disparage and demean Plaintiff GREENE in his presence and in the presence of others, making and/or ratifying derogatory references to Plaintiff GREENE’s sexual orientation and age, stating “you know how those ‘gay boys’ are”…
After [Harold Scull's] death, Defendants BREWSTER and STAGG-HOURIGAN further expressed displeasure at dealing with expressions of grief by a gay man who had lost his long-time partner.
Reading about the SEC going after Goldman Sachs for their collective direct attack on America, it appears that this is strictly civil litigation rather than criminal. In other words, it could all happen again. How do you stop that? They need to individually criminalize this behavior, and explicitly craft the law so that if they cannot identify the guilty parties it carries up the line:
Accountant to director to COO to CEO to chairman to shareholder with the most stock by percentage, and if that shareholder is a holding firm or another company, you repeat the chain of responsibility there at the executive level, until you finally hit someone. Any ‘crime’ must have someone ultimately legally responsible, who will face jail time. A corporation has to be accountable to the people, and that’s the only way. Some of these companies literally exhale money in the way that we exhale carbon dioxide. A $50,000,000 fine for them is an accounting aberration, not a deterrent against future evil or even criminal activities. Until you have multiple individuals led from the court rooms in shackles, it won’t stop, because it has no reason to.
Preface: I’m Byzantine Catholic, but God help me why I bother even considering myself that way with how disgusted I am with Rome.
I wonder how Constitutional a law would be that mandated that any groups that interact with or oversee children, from pre/nursery schools to high schools to Churches to Scouts were legally required to report to police any and all suspected acts of child rape, and that failure to do so would itself be a criminal penalty? Combine that with complete elimination of all statutes of limitations on child rape crimes–and no statutes of limitations on the failure to report bit–and I wonder if it would all be legally upheld.
A bill in Connecticut’s legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.
However, I can’t imagine this not having massive popular support in general. The Church seems to be incapable of or unwilling to clean up their own mess here, even though they’re in no position of authority like they were in, let’s say, 1600. But they continue to act as if they were, or as if humility in the face of their rape victims were somehow beneath them. Here’s another one from the Associated Press, from today. I’m going to highlight in boldface the passages that are problems.
Initially, the Vatican responded defensively, with Vatican officials and cardinals accusing the media, the Masons, pro-abortion rights and pro-gay marriage supporters for plotting attacks against the pope. Recently, the Vatican has shifted course, still complaining about an anti-Catholic campaign but also promising more transparency and taking initiatives to at least give an impression that change is afoot.
Lombardi said new initiatives were being studied, including more papal meetings with victims as well as a “deepening of the measures of prevention and response” to abuse. He declined to elaborate. But victims groups have long complained that the Vatican has never issued any universal norms instructing bishops on the pastoral care they should provide for victims or prevention strategies to make sure pedophiles aren’t admitted into the priesthood in the first place.
What’s the problem there? Where is the mention or even implication that if a priest rapes a minor of a police notification? If a school principal, nurse, or teacher suspected such a thing, they’re even legally required to notify police. Is the fact we don’t require this of clergy some sense of respect or deference for the Church? We even now have private groups like the Boy Scouts of America doing the same thing: not taking full notification of responsibility. They just lost that trial in Oregon, by the way, for covering up child rape. But who–which person or persons–in the Boy Scouts leadership was ultimately responsible for this? Who made the decision to shield rapists? Who is responsible in the United States for shielding rapists in the Church?
Treat this as it is, legally and logically: aiding and abetting a criminal rapist of children. We should treat this as a felony criminal action. Take this, from Wikipedia (I looked it up, and it’s legitimate):
As indicated by the Supreme Court of the United States, “In order to aid and abet another to commit a crime it is necessary that a defendant ‘in some sort associate himself with the venture, that he participate in it as in something that he wishes to bring about, that he seek by his action to make it succeed.” Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 618 (1949) quoting Judge Learned Hand in U.S. v. Peoni 100 F.2d 401, 402 (2d. Cir. 1938).
The key passage for me is this: “that he seek by his action to make it succeed.” What else is there, in concealing, shielding, and defending in an undercover-from-the-law manner a pedophile but then to allow the criminal further success in the rape of children?
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What do we do, then, about this?
I’m actually seriously considering mailing my state Senate and Legislative reps with such a suggestion. They’re wonderful people and responsive, so I know the suggestion would get at least a review. Anyone think such a set of laws could pass constitutional muster?
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
The video, Wikileaks says, was taken from a US Apache helicopter on July 2, 2007, in Baghdad, which shows the killing of civilians and Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying since then to get the video released without luck, but Wikileaks had it leaked to them in an encrypted format, and had it decrypted. Now it’s literally all over the Internet.
Let’s see how long it takes the national US news media to really chase this down. Or, if they do… and how long until the Wikileaks staff are targeted now?
I just received an email from Wikileaks editor Julian Assange that’s pretty wild. It accuses the U.S. government of deliberately trying to take down the whistle-blower site PDF two years ago.
As proof, Wikileaks has posted a 32-page classified document PDF from the Department of Defense Intelligence Analysis program, dated March 2008, which details “the counterintelligence threat posed to the US Army by the Wikileaks.org Web site.” It reads:
“The possibility that a current employee or mole within DoD or elsewhere in the US government is providing sensitive information or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out. Wikileaks.org claims that the ‘leakers’ or ‘whistleblowers’ of sensitive or classified DoD documents are former US government employees.”
The document, attributed to the Army Counterintelligence Center and titled “Wikileaks.org — An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?”, cited the leaking of classified Army materials as the chief reason Wikileaks is harmful to national security.
Basically, Wikileaks–I used to read it sometimes, but couldn’t make heads or tails of half the things I was looking at–became a massive clearinghouse of all sorts of leaked, useful information. It got a foreign bank to sue them in the United States for some nonsense of impeding trade, which was finally thrown out in court after the the bank was humiliated. If I recall right, Wikileaks just kept leaking their stuff right out during trial, so they gave up. With this, the government under Bush’s administration actually looked into ways to take them down. Well, tonight it looks like, on top of the above mentioned news, they’ve apparently really pissed off the US intel orginization this time–I’ve never seen commentary like this from them before. From their twitter:
WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation. Following/photographing/filming/detaining. about 1 hours ago
If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible. about 1 hours ago
Two under State Dep diplomatic cover followed our editor from Iceland to http://skup.no on Thursday. about 1 hours ago
One related person was detained for 22 hours. Computer’s seized.That’s http://www.skup.no 44 minutes ago
We know our possession of the decrypted airstrike video is now being discussed at the highest levels of US command. 32 minutes ago
If you know more about the operations against us, contact https://secure.wikileaks.org/ 31 minutes ago
We have been shown secret photos of our production meetings and been asked specific questions during detention related to the airstrike. 27 minutes ago
We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don’t think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks. 23 minutes ago
Even when the heat is on, someone leaks them CIA airline records from the investigation? Yes, someone will call bullshit, but they do I think have a reputation for being bullshit-free. Looks like the Internet has finally caught up with the Old World of governments, and the governments are pissed they can’t control the Internet. Too bad.
It looks like Wikileaks may have evidence of some sort of murder carried out by the US military or possibly the CIA (sorry for the bad translation):
On April 5 to Wikileaks at a meeting of the National Press Club in Washington a video showing an attack by the U.S. Air Force. It would involve a murder carried out by the Pentagon. The staff of the site also draw on information from CIA aircraft have as supporting evidence.
If that’s true, it implies that the airstrike–I have no idea what airstrike this is about–violated either domestic or international law and/or was an outright murder versus a legal military action. If their claims of being detained and followed overseas by United States officials and the CIA are true, then they’ve definitely got their hands on something the State Department, Pentagon or CIA don’t want out there. I wonder what?
Is this about the Kunduz airstrike in Afghanistan from September 4, 2009, when a US F-15 caused the deaths of dozens of civilians? Or is it about, as rumored online, an assassination of journalists by the military that was recorded–which Wikileaks alluded to on February 20th, 2010?
Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs.
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
What a shocker… Blackwater USA, an American company founded by a Christian fundamentalist, runs mercenaries across the Middle East. A bunch of heavily armed Blackwater “staff” shoot up a bunch of innocent Iraqis one day, and eventually have the legal case against them tossed on a technicality. Along the way, Blackwater USA renames itself “Xe” to rebrand themselves. Not unlike how AIG is trying to rebrand themselves, I imagine, after AIG almost destroyed the whole of the financial realm in the Western world. Turns out that Xe/Blackwater thugs shot up more people, this time in Afghanistan.
The particulars of what happened last May 5 — including whether the contractors had been drinking and whether they were acting in self-defense — are in dispute, but everyone agrees the shooting occurred after a traffic accident in Kabul.
The charges have attracted attention for coming so soon after a federal judge dismissed a case against Blackwater contractors who allegedly killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. That shooting also unfolded after a traffic incident.
The contractors in the Kabul case, Christopher Drotleff, 29, and Justin Cannon, 27, were arrested last week in Corpus Christi, TX, and Virginia Beach, VA, respectively. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
How long until the Obama administration grows up and cuts off all Federal funding for this operation? It seems like their continued employment is not in the political interests of the United States, to put it mildly. If we’re spread so thin with our actual legal military that we need to hire mercenaries, perhaps that a sign that we shouldn’t be still fighting in these countries that the useless Bush administration dumped us into?
Amazing, that it’s been already one year since hatred and improper out-of-state financial carpetbagging by Mormon extremists conned California into rejecting equal civil rights via Proposition 8. The fact that civil rights, or any human rights, are something that can be voted on is a whole other filthy mess that needs to be legally challenged up to our Supreme Court level. At least in Washington state, when the hatred of Referendum 71 was presented–similar to California’s Proposition of hate–our state voters smartly and overwhelming rejected it despite more out-of-state financial carpetbagging by Christian extremists from Oregon and other areas.
The people of Maine were not so fortunate, where it was reported that some Catholic churches conducted secondary collections to help fund anti-gay voting.
Like women’s rights and interracial marriage, delegating the question of equality to the whims of the state level are fundamentally flawed and unethical. Like what happened with abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973 and the rights of blacks to marry whites in Loving V. Virginia in 1966, I’m thinking this won’t end until someone can challenge it to the Supreme Court. You simply don’t vote on “rights”. The biases of any religion cannot be allowed to affect the lives of all your other citizens who don’t follow that religion, full stop.
It’s gotten so bad now one year later with dangerous religious extremism trying to sway American legal destiny that the Catholic Church announced it would terminate all charity work in our nation’s capital if Washington D.C. legalized gay marriage locally, in revenge.
We’re now getting closer daily to the desires of the far Right for concepts like dominionism and Christian doctrine to be our version of an American Sharia law. Both ideals are patently dangerous, wrong for a secular multi-cultural nation like ours, and frankly evil if imposed on everyone who doesn’t subscribe to those limited precepts. If it happens, our nation is pretty much doomed to become the next Iran.
There were nationwide protests a year ago this weekend, where millions of people opposed the religious hatred and civil rights violations last year in California. These were my photos from the Seattle protests:
A letter I just sent off to my state senator and representatives. If you’re in Washington state, I suggest you do likewise.
Hello,
Thank you all for your continued hard work and service.
I came across this news story, about the TVW and Dow Constantine situation. If you are unfamiliar with this, I implore you to read the below news article. This is troubling for all Washington state taxpayers.
Background: TVW is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation, not a government agency. It is governed by an independent board of directors. The majority of TVW’s operating cash – approximately $2.5 million per year – comes from the Legislature via a contract-for-service through the Secretary of State. TVW receives more than $11 million per year in the form of in-kind contributions of channel space from Washington’s cable television industry.
Politics aside, I am troubled by the fact that materials produced by money levied from taxes paid for by Washington citizens are being held in some form of “copyright” claim by a private entity like TVW, or anyone else. Many US state governments (and many foreign governments) are moving toward any materials produced by the government being “free”, in the public domain or under what is known as a Creative Commons license, which is increasingly popular year over year.
For example, this is a list of state-level US agencies and some Federal that issue content under Creative Commons:
Washington is a leading state in the fields of technology. We have many prominent tech corporations, innumerable technology start-ups, and are known nationally on this stage. The ideals of ‘open sourcing’ and free licensing are a core component of the ethos of many of these corporations. Our state government should at the least be in compliance with what is becoming nationally standard.
What I would like to request is consideration for a bill like the above Virginia one, but with stronger language, that any goods “produced” with tax funding in a fixed form: written text, visual recordings, maps, videos, audio, anything official to come out of Olympia or local government, state and local laws, a random video the City of Spokane may make, etc. be required to be produced and released under a license such as the Creative Commons licensing that simply requires “Attribution”.
This link details the specifics of the licensing I think would be best:
Washington state would still ultimately retain ownership of all the content in this scenario, but by law it should be mandatory that any government-funded (in any way) materials should be freely available, with no copyright restriction beyond attribution. I have zero problem with an entity like TVW turning an ultimate profit from what they’re doing, that originated with state dollars. Anyone is welcome to do that–good for TVW for coming up with a successful model. But they, nor anyone else, should have exclusive claim over content *I* paid for.
What I’m upset about is that any organization then leveraging copyright claims to squash what is protected “fair use” of their materials that were paid for by my tax dollars. In the wake of the Constantine fiasco posted about on Publicola, they are now going after a political blogger for reposting the now notorious video on another “video sharing” service, as detailed at this link: http://horsesass.org/?p=21640
Please help Washington state be a leader in the realm of intellectual property law, and allow us to do better than other states, such as Virginia. Please initiate legislation based on the Virginia example above, but with stronger language than the “preference” tone they set. Make it mandatory, to allow Washington state tax payers to always have free access to what we have already paid for with our taxes.
If you’re not from Seattle or Washington State, this may bore you and/or go over your head.
This isn’t surprising, but I hope they litigate the hell out of it. From the article:
Public records from the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) contain a number of disturbing revelations about the process that led WSDOT to move forward with the deep-bore tunnel on the downtown waterfront early this year.
Emails, internal memos, and other agency documents reveal that WSDOT appointed longtime advocates for the deep-bore tunnel as “experts” on tunnel costs; redistributed tunnel costs to make the price appear lower; and failed to study the surface/transit/I-5 alternative, subbing in a faux four-lane “surface” alternative that included none of the transit and surface-street improvements in the surface/transit/I-5 proposal.
I went on a tour of the Alaskan Way Viaduct that the deep-bore tunnel is slated to replace back in March. I’m wondering now how much of what seemed like a well balanced, reasonable series of explanations and science presented there were in hindsight political spin and out-and-out nonsense. I’ve got photos here, if you’re curious what the viaduct tour is. For people not from here, it’s our waterfront elevated freeway that needs to be desperately replaced, and that has been at the center of endless legal battles on both the state and local level. It’s especially bad if they played dirty politics here, since this deal to build the tunnel had the City of Seattle on the hook for any and all cost overruns. Not the state.
I mailed my state representatives in Olympia late night on Monday, October 19th 2009, for the 36th WA state congressional district. It was based on this submission I did concurrently to Slashdot, which was published by Slashdot early in the morning on Tuesday the 20th: Legal War For WA State Sunshine Law
I wrote to them:
Hello,
I am copying all my 36th reps on this. Please introduce something like this. The I-1033 & R-71 obfuscation is a cancer on WA state. Proposed wording:
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All Initiatives and Referendums in Washington State are public activities for registered voters, and for purposes of open government, transparency, and so that voters can check all such activities to ensure they are not falsely misrepresented, shall be public record.
The State of Washington shall publish the full names, date of voter registration, town or municipality of the registered voter in Washington State, and the date and location in which they signed the initiative or referendum petition, in a public manner on the Internet for all Washington State residents to review.
The data must be accessible to the public on the Internet with no registration required, in both a searchable (“free, online”) web-based format in addition to normal “offline” formats.
All state generated referendum data will be considered a matter of public record for the good of the community and transparency. Actual public elections and votes will remain private, as subject to other laws.
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Please get this proposed in Olympia as law. Get it passed, and then if the anti-democracy types want to challenge this in court, let them make a stand.
Thank you.
That went to Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Representative Reuven Carlyle, and Representative Mary Lou Dickerson.
Via Digg, from the It’s The End Of Your Civil Rights As We Know Them Department, also known as Please Read The Manual, Also Known As the Constitution, You Neocon Psychopaths. “Benjamin Franklin long ago warned against rhetoric that demands trading individual rights for corporate security. Asking Americans to greenlight extensive, unchecked electronic surveillance by changing their very definition of privacy is a prime example of such rhetoric.”
Nice: US authorities, The MPAA and other antipirates are desperately trying to come up with new arguments to cease The Pirate Bay’s activities, but the popular BitTorrent tracker is not planning to back down. Pirate Bay admin Brokep notes: “The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don’t want to see us give in…”
Comcast’s filtering/throttling of torrent traffic involves forging TCP reset packets, pretending to be from one end of the torrent session. This is the same technique used by the Great Firewall of China, and a pretty clear violation of various states’ criminal impersonation statues. Could Comcast face legal action?
I went on a tour of the 
