Category Archives: culture

More Disingenuousness in Government

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Mens rea is a criminal law concept that says in order to commit a crime, a man must have intended to commit the crime; he must have had a “guilty mind.” Lack of this guilty mind doesn’t mean the man didn’t do anything wrong; he may well have, and a trial and a jury can make that determination—it would be civil wrong, for which he still would be held accountable on that jury deliberation. He just didn’t commit a crime.

In addition to the current move in the Senate to reform sentencing and jail terms, some Senators want to clarify the specifics of mens rea in criminal law.

The House Judiciary Committee last year passed a bill on mens rea…reform that would create a default standard for criminal intent in instances when no standard exists. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte would like to see it pass along with sentencing reform.

However.

Both Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA) and President Barack Obama (D) disagree with mens rea reform and for largely the same reasons, and they’re moving to block this reform.

Grassley is blocking it because

…strengthening the requirements for criminal intent would make it harder to convict corporations than under the current amorphous state of the law.

Obama wants to block it because

…a default standard of criminal intent would make it harder to prosecute companies for regulatory violations.

This is a cynical reading of Government’s role in trials. The purpose of bringing charges and having trials isn’t so prosecutors can get convictions and look good in the shower or otherwise have something to show for their taxpayer-funded paychecks. The purpose of standards of guilt or innocence in criminal law—or civil law, to stretch for a time the definitions of guilt and innocence—is not to stack the deck against the defendant.

The purpose of these things is to provide justice for the people wronged and for the people accused.

Full stop.

A Thought on Gun Rights

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The city of Lowell, MA, and its police chief have one. It’s dead wrong, too. The city’s new law, pushed by its Police Superintendent, William Taylor,

requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.

Aside from the outlandish cost being just another means of denying licenses to American citizens (training required in Texas, for instance, costs around $300), there’s this, from police department spokesman, Captain Timothy Crowley:

If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why. That is not unreasonable to most people.

Yes, it is unreasonable to most people. It’s also wholly and cynically unconstitutional. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says on the matter:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Notice that. There’s nothing in there that says, “Shall not be infringed unless Government disapproves the man’s reason.” There’s nothing in there that even grants Government a right to ask, much less to know, a citizen’s reason to keep and bear his Arms. Just for clarity’s sake, too, the Supreme Court has ruled that this is entirely an individual right, and not a collective one.

No. The only legitimate way to require licenses to keep and bear is, after training, on a will issue basis.

Full stop.

An Opportunity

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…in the hands of competent authority.

ISIS fighters who fled to the terror group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul after being defeated in Ramadi were burned alive in the town square, sources told FoxNews.com, in an unmistakable message to fighters who may soon be defending the northern city from government forces.

Several residents of Mosul recounted the grisly story for stateside relatives, describing the deadly reception black clad jihadists got when they made it to Mosul….

Notice that. These were guys who’d either rejected the martyrdom of dying in place or who had recognized a lost position and departed in order to resume the fight in another place and time.

Here’s the opportunity: guys like this aren’t going to be allowed, in Tacitus’ words, to “fight and run away, To turn and fight another day.” No, they’ll die, anyway, a grisly death of the sort reserved for the enemies of the Daesh. So: make it easy for them to surrender rather than retreat.

Of course, that would require their Arab or Kurdish captors, of whatever sect of Islam, to treat them with some semblance of humanity. But that’s another opportunity, this time for Arabs and Kurds, of whatever sect of Islam, themselves.

A Definition of Terrorism

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The Global Terrorism Database has one (and scroll to Data Collection and the Definition of Terrorism):

the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.

Notice that: no killings necessary to be an act of terrorism. No destruction necessary to be an act of terrorism. No definition of what constitutes violence. In the end, only the threat of…something…is necessary to be an act of terror.

Leave it to the Left (the GTD is an arm of the University of Maryland) to invent a version of terrorism that could include microaggressions, triggers, and on and on—all acts of “fear,” “coercion,” “intimidation” in the hearts of precious snowflakes and others terrified of disagreement or uncomfortable truths.

It’s true that the GTD picked up this definition from a predecessor; however, GTD has made no effort to tighten the definition at all. It’s only made its database searchable with criteria that let the searcher make up whatever definition of terrorism suits his narrative.

Microaggressions as terrorism. Triggers as terrorism. Hurt feelings as terrorism.

Hmm….

No Self Importance Here

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…by a prominent Left personage.

Even those of us on the left feel the wrath of the leftier-than-thou brigade from time to time. I don’t generally have a hard time avoiding objectionable language myself because (a) I’m liberal, (b) I’m good with words, and (c) I write rather than talk, which gives me time to get my act together. But even at that, sometimes I cross an invisible line and get trounced for it.

But for someone without my advantages, I can easily see how it might feel almost impossible to express an unpopular opinion without tying yourself in knots. And let’s be honest: we liberals do tend to yell racism a little more often than we should. And we do tend to suggest that anyone who likes guns or Jesus is a rube. And the whole “privilege” thing sure does get tiresome sometimes. And we do get a little pedantic in our insistence that no conversation about anything is complete unless it specifically acknowledges the special problems of marginalized groups. It can be pretty suffocating at times.

Well. That’s real white of him. Read the whole thing to see just how white, though.