Monthly Archives: May 2018

A Tenth Circuit Speculator

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The Institute for Justice summarized a 10th Circuit case regarding a car involved in an immediately prior weapons case, its driver, and a weapon thusly:

Aurora, CO, police run tags on car with broken tail light, discover the car was seized three weeks earlier in weapons-possession case and a man (a known gang member) associated with the car was arrested. They pull it over; the man is in it; they frisk him and find a gun. He’s charged with being a felon in possession. Suppress the evidence? No need, says the 10th Circuit. Though he was calm and compliant, officers were justified in patting him down to ensure their safety.
Dissent: The gov’t is going to use this decision to justify frisks in a much broader variety of circumstances than the ones here.

The dissenting judge may well be right, but he’s speculating only.  Treat those speculatedly future cases one by each, as the unique cases they will be, and rule in accordance with the facts of those cases, not the facts of this case.

Mindset

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Here’s the new US offer regarding the Iran nuclear weapons deal; we’ll soon see pretty clearly the mindsets of Germany, France, and the UK.  And of Iran.

Iran must

  • end nuclear weapons development in perpetuity
  • stop all uranium enrichment
  • never preprocess plutonium
  • allow nuclear unqualified access to all sites throughout the country
  • withdraw all forces from Syria
  • end support for militant groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, youths militia and Taliban in Afghanistan, and the IRGC Quds Forces
  • stop sending arms to the Houthi militia in Yemen
  • release all US citizens
  • cease threats to destroy Israel
  • stop missile launches
  • stop development of nuclear-capable missiles
  • respecting Iraqi government sovereignty

In return, the US would

  • be willing to lift all economic sanctions
  • restore full diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran
  • allow it to access advanced technology
  • support modernization of Iranian economy
  • help it reintegrate into the global financial system

Big gains for Iran in recompense for serious Iranian behavior.

So: do the European parties to the existing nuclear weapons deal want stability and prosperity in the Middle East, or do they prefer appeasing Iran?  Do they care about Israel’s prosperity and safety in a nuclear weapons free Middle East, or do they prefer appeasing Iran?

Do they accept the terms on offer or have concrete, viable counteroffers (vis., include a demand for release of all British citizens), or…?

Journalistic Integrity

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I got an online newspaper survey (requested by a highly respected paper), and one of the questions opened a text box into which I was asked to enter my thoughts on subjects to be addressed by the paper’s contributors.  This is my list of topics.

  1. ID of “anonymous” sources
  2. Explanation of why [the paper] has walked away from journalistic standard of corroborating “anonymous” sources with at least two on the record sources [Note: this paper is not unique; the standard has been ignored by all news media]
  3. Explanation of why we readers should believe “anonymous” sources actually exist
  4. On the premise that at least some of the “anonymous” sources actually exist, explanation of why we should believe what the source is claiming, given his fundamental dishonesty as demonstrated by his leak, which came at least in violation of his terms of employment if not his oath of office
  5. On claims that the leaker is actually a whistle-blower, explanation of why proof was withheld from readers that he exhausted all of his whistle-blower channels before he leaked
  6. Regarding 5 above, provision of that proof
  7. Identification of the whistle blower, since he needs no anonymity; whistle-blower laws protect him

Selling Out Ukraine

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Russian President Vladimir Putin a few days ago in the Russian city of Sochi, which is next door to Russia-partitioned Georgia and a short Black Sea hop from Russian-occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine.  While the two talked of many things: of cease fires—and peace keepers—and pipelines—of Iran—and deals—and things—and why the region is boiling hot (they didn’t get to flying pigs), one thing they discussed jumped out at me.  Deutsche Welle cited Merkel as insisting that

…the Minsk accord was the “only basis” to achieve peace in eastern Ukraine….

The Minsk accord (Minsk Protocol) is a 2014 “agreement” among Ukraine, Russia, and a rebel gang calling themselves Donetsk People’s Republic that implemented a cease fire in Ukraine’s Donbass region, comprised of the oblasts Donetsk and Luhansk on Ukraine’s border with Russia.  The accord codified Russia’s occupation of those two oblasts and the resulting partition of Ukraine with the rebel gang fronting for Russia.  The accord carefully did not address Russian-occupied Crimea.

Merkel plainly has walked away from the much prior (1994) Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.  This agreement consists of three included agreements that guarantee the territorial and political integrity of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and it was signed by the US, the UK—and Russia.  The core of the Budapest Memorandum consists of these six guarantees as they pertain to Ukraine:

  1. Respect Ukrainian independence, sovereignty, and the existing borders
  2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine
  3. Refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics
  4. Seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, “if [it] should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”
  5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Ukraine
  6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding these commitments

This is Germany’s sellout of Ukraine.  We need to start correcting our own failure regarding the Budapest Memorandum.  I’ve written elsewhere of the need for a NATO-like mutual defense pact among the US, the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine, among others in eastern (and eventually northern) Europe.  It’s time to get a move on.

How Bad is a Vocational Education?

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Especially compared with a formal college education?  Oren Cass, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, had some thoughts on that in a recent Wall Street Journal piece.

Elevating vocational education, and prioritizing its students, must begin with a substantial reshaping of American high schools. Vocational education will not succeed so long as culture and public policy consign it to second-class status—a dumping ground for students who interfere with what school districts consider their real mission, college prep.

It’s absolutely true that we shouldn’t be deprecating the status of those with or who prefer, for any reason, vocational educations.  These folks—the VoTech graduates, the OO graduates—the trades and secretaries are critical to our economy. What road gets built, what office buildings or houses get built, what communications networks get laid out without the trades?  What office is operable without the secretaries and office managers who do the actual nitty-gritty of running things?

What will a designer or an engineer or an architect do without the trades and secretaries to turn ideas into action?

Cass is spot on.