Category Archives: rights

A Geopolitical Misunderstanding

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…if The Wall Street Journal‘s interpretation is accurate, and a lack of political courage [emphasis added].

A solution to the Ukraine crisis is still far off, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned on Saturday, as his Russian counterpart accused the West of seeking to create chaos in the Kremlin’s geographic sphere.

And

Steinmeier said that a few weeks ago “we were on the brink of direct confrontation” between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces but that diplomacy had “prevented the worst.” However, he said, “I am under no illusion. A political solution is still a long way off.”

Last things first. Diplomacy has “prevented the worst?” Only if the worst is taken as the conquering and occupation of Ukraine as a whole, which is not an implausible view. However, diplomacy has failed to prevent the near-worst: Russian occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, together with a drive along Ukraine’s Sea of Azov coast with a view toward opening a land route to occupied Crimea, solidifying militarily the occupation.

Diplomacy alone—talking alone—can achieve very little beyond abject acceptance of these military facts. Diplomacy, to have any material effect, must be backed by, must be animated by, force—economic, military, and/or their combination. To date, there has been no force backing the West’s…diplomacy. The West has been too timid even to apply economic force against the Russians, only pin pricks that give western leaders a means of comforting themselves through the night.

Now to this:

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] reiterated the conditions Moscow requires for the crisis to be resolved, including acceptance of Ukraine as a “neutral and non-bloc country,” meaning one that would remain outside of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This brings us back to the first thing. Neither Ukraine, nor any other of the nations bordering on Russia, belong in any way to Russia or to “the Kremlin’s geographic sphere.” These are sovereign nations, and they’re free to chart their own course—including aligning themselves with the West, joining the prosperity of Western free market economics, even taking in the essential sovereignty of a people over their government. No matter how uncomfortable this might make Russia.

And no, Mr Lavrov, not all cultures are equal, and neither are all polities morally equivalent.

Liberty, Security, and Encryption

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Moves by Apple Inc and Google Inc to put some smartphone data out of the reach of police and the courts are raising alarms inside US law-enforcement agencies, current and former officials say.

Of course the government is upset. Heaven forfend anything should interfere with its convenience in fishing for wrong-doing in our private correspondence. Privacy, though, is a necessary component of individual liberty and responsibility.

There is a trade-off, to be sure, between that and government’s ability to do the job of protecting us from others and from extra-national threats that we’ve hired it to do, but we must be very wary about how much of our liberty we surrender and how much of our responsibility we foist off, and we must be extremely chary of the trade-offs we make in that regard.

One Justice Department official said that if the new systems work as advertised, they will make it harder, if not impossible, to solve some cases. Another said the companies have promised customers “the equivalent of a house that can’t be searched, or a car trunk that could never be opened.”

“Harder to solve,” perhaps. “Impossible,” though, is a coarse exaggeration: our cops are better than that. Additionally, it’s long been American philosophy that it’s better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man gets locked up. Today’s threats aren’t enough to walk away from that bastion principle of liberty.

As to that second plaint, it’s another exaggeration. The searches might get harder, but the devices are easily controllable, and get a warrant.

And this:

Andrew Weissmann, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation general counsel, called Apple’s announcement outrageous, because even a judge’s decision that there is probable cause to suspect a crime has been committed won’t get Apple to help retrieve potential evidence. Apple is “announcing to criminals, ‘use this,’ ” he said. “You could have people who are defrauded, threatened, or even at the extreme, terrorists using it.”

However. It isn’t Apple that’s being accused, or suspected, or against whom probable cause is being alleged, it’s the cell phone owner. Searching Apple’s facility because the light is better there is…faulty.

Weissman also ignores both the right of an American citizen to protect himself against a government that has shown itself increasingly intrusive, avaricious, and controlling, and the fact that a warrant must be obtained on the one hand, and on the other, once a warrant has been obtained, the government can use its own facilities to conduct the search. These facilities include both the ability to sanction the phone’s owner for not providing the password and the use of government’s IT facilities for cracking the password.

Then there’s another question. Government cannot assume our responsibilities in our place morally. If government does assume our responsibilities in our place legally, we will have lost our individual liberties and responsibilities.

Without individual liberty and responsibility not only can there be no security, there can be no hope of security.

They Need to Make up Their Minds

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The Minnesota Vikings issued a statement early Wednesday saying that running back Adrian Peterson must remain away from all team activities until his felony child abuse case is settled.

The move was an about-face for the team, which reinstated Peterson to the active roster Monday after deactivating him following the All-Pro running back’s indictment Friday.

Peterson has an initial hearing scheduled for October 8 in Montgomery County, Texas on a charge of reckless or negligent injury to a child. He is accused of beating his four-year-old son with a wooden switch, leaving bruises and other wounds that were visible days later. Peterson told police that he was merely inflicting discipline and had not intended to hurt the boy.

He spanked his son with a switch. So were my brothers and I by our parents. Charles Barkley has said, without too much exaggeration,

Whipping—we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances[.]

This pasty white blogger grew up in the Midwest, and spankings with switches, paddles, whatever fell to hand, were commonplace. We weren’t harmed, except in our pride. And we learned discipline. “Beating?” Bruises “and other wounds that were visible days later?” Based on what evidence? Besides rumors reprinted in newspapers, I mean?

The Vikings’ statement continued:

We want to be clear; we have a strong stance regarding the protection and welfare of children, and we want to be sure we get this right. At the same time, we want to express our support for Adrian and acknowledge his seven-plus years of outstanding commitment to this organization and this community.

This is hypocritical. They’re not supporting a man who’s losing a significant part of his career—even great running backs only have careers of 10 years or less. Sitting him down until his case is “resolved” will cost him this year, and the trial and appeals can go on for two or three years before the matter is “resolved.”

Pick a response and stay with it; quit the bouncing back and forth. But as the Vikings choose their final answer, they need to keep in mind a quintessentially American principle: in the end, of what is Peterson guilty? Not of what is he accused, what has he actually done? When was his trial? All the evidence isn’t available, only that subset of it that a press anxious for stories to peddle chooses to make available.

There’s also this minor contractual obligation:

Under the collective bargaining agreement, a team can only deactivate a player for non-injury reasons for a maximum of four games. The same limit applies if [a team] were to suspend [a player] for conduct detrimental to the team.

Rules, and Rules

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In a northern California grade school, there’s a dress code. And there can be no exceptions to the rule.

A young girl was told by her school that she couldn’t wear a T-shirt to pay tribute to the lives lost on Sept 11, 2001.

School leaders say they have a good reason for banning the sixth-grader’s Sept 11 memorial T-shirt on Thursday. When her stepfather tried to get permission, school administrators say it violated their dress code.

District Senior Director for Community Relations Trent Allen said that students were only allowed to deviate from the uniform on free dress days, and 9/11 isn’t one of those days.

It’s very much an important part of the academic process, but need to enforce dress code policy. If you start making exceptions it is hard to draw the line.

Emphasis added to that last. Because there’s a hint there regarding the bureaucratic nature of rules.

In Which a Judge Gets It Right

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…but is forced to rule wrongly.

The SEIU sued University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, alleging “unfair” labor practices in that, claimed the union, UPMC management interfered with employees’ right to organize. In connection with that suit, the NLRB issued three subpoenas demanding “highly confidential and proprietary information” be released from UPMC to the union.

Federal District Judge Arthur Schwab found the NLRB’s subpoenas, among other things, over broad and unfocused, and so illegitimate. He also found the subpoenas fundamentally irrelevant to the underlying case (which itself would have rendered the subpoenas inappropriate). He went further. In noting that the NLRB itself made no serious effort to argue the relevance of its subpoenas, he wrote [emphasis added]

The Court does not see how these requests have any legitimate relationship or relevance to the underlying alleged unfair labor practices; instead, the requests seek highly confidential and proprietary information…and, the requests seek information that a union would not be entitled to receive as part of a normal organization effort. Indeed, the scope and nature of the requests, coupled with the NLRB’s efforts to obtain said documents for, and on behalf of, the SEIU, arguably moves the NLRB from its investigatory function and enforcer of federal labor law, to serving as the litigation arm of the Union, and a co-participant in the ongoing organization effort of the Union.

But he was forced to the wrong outcome and to uphold the subpoenas; although he stayed his upholding pending appeal.

However, the practical effect of case law as to enforcement of subpoenas of federal government agencies is that this Court is constrained to essentially “rubber stamp” the enforcement of the Subpoenas at hand.

The Third Circuit, the appellate court for Schwab’s district, can overrule Schwab and strike down the subpoenas. The appellate level is the normal place where Federal agency subpoenas get struck. Schwab also, though, has given the Third an out.

If the practical effect of this legal predicament is to be altered, it is not the District Court’s role to do so, but the role of the appellate court. The Court is at a loss of how to adequately address the above issues of whether the matter under investigation serves legitimate purposes, whether the inquiry is relevant to that purpose, and not unduly broad or burdensome, while still conforming to the extremely narrow and limited nature of the proceedings at hand. If the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit finds that the District Court has the authority to conduct a meaningful and/or thorough review of the three (3) Subpoena[s] at issue here, the Court is prepared to do so.

Schwab’s opinion can be read here.