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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Two of My Least Favorite Non-Terrorists, At Odds in One News Story Gloria Allred, feminist attorney and general nuisance, wants California to investigate Michael Jackson's fitness as a parent. One of my first unpleasant memories of Gloria Allred was her suit against stores for having "boys toys" and "girls toys" shelf tags. She believed that this promoted sexual stereotyping, causing boys to be boys and girls to be girls. Now Ms. Allred is concerned about Michael Jackson--one of those strong arguments for "boys to be boys and girls to be girls." Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Religion of Peace: More Evidence From an AP news story: The deputy governor of a largely Islamic state in northern Nigeria has called on Muslims to kill the Nigerian writer of a newspaper article about the Miss World beauty pageant that sparked deadly religious riots.Notice how Ms. Daniel's cheeky, even obnoxious writing "sparked deadly religious riots"? It couldn't be that an narrow-minded, intolerant bunch started burning churches and murdering Christians because they found Ms. Daniel's remarks irritating. One of the reasons that I am no big fan of unlimited democracy is: Zamfara was the first of 12 states to adopt Islamic law, or Shariah, after Nigerian military rule gave way to elected government in 1999. Religious clashes since then have killed thousands across the country.Military dictatorship for Nigeria doesn't look so bad by comparison, does it? Monday, November 25, 2002
My "Ballistic Fingerprinting" Article From Shotgun News "Ballistic Fingerprinting," Shotgun News, December 16, 2002, pp. 20-22 is now on my web site. And Your First Clue That Cigarettes Are Addictive Was? I've never been very sympathetic to people who sue tobacco companies. Certainly, since 1964 when the federal government required cigarettes to carry a warning label, the excuse that, "I didn't know that they were bad for me" has been very, very weak. For generations before that, there have been people warning that cigarettes are a bad thing, but because those who said this were Christians, and their objection to cigarettes was a moral objection, cigarettes became a good thing to those who were so very debonair. I am pleased to find, through How Appealing!, this U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision pointing out that not only is tobacco addictive, but this has been known for about....oh five centuries now. The plaintiff who complains that he has smoked for 32 years and only discovered that cigarettes were addictive when he saw a former tobacco company executive testify to this is 1999 must clearly be some sort of moron, at best. By 1994, this shocking discovery was even sufficiently well-known to make it into an episode of Friends--I guess the ultimate expression of how lowest common denominator this information must be. Capital Punishment: Why I Sometimes Have a Hard Time Opposing It I don't have an intellectual problem with the death penalty. I am concerned that our criminal justice system doesn't do an adequate job of making sure that it has the right person, and it is certainly the case that race was often a factor in why some men got the death penalty for rape, and others didn't, not that many years ago. But my primary objection to the death penalty is a purely emotional one: it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck when I think of anyone, including our employees in the government, executing someone. And there are days that I read news stories like this one, and my rage and disgust at these sort of scum prevent me from getting too angry about the death penalty: A former couple were sentenced to death Wednesday for luring a Pleasanton student into a specially rigged van where they sexually tortured and strangled her before dumping her body on a snowy embankment.This is also the reason that I get so upset when I see libertines of various sorts arguing that Christians are being narrow-minded when they argue that a certain amount of sexual self-restraint is a good thing. California is one of those places where there is no notion of sexual self-restraint of any sort, and anyone that suggests otherwise is portrayed as some sort of hopeless idiot who doesn't realize that if everyone could just do what they wanted sexually, there wouldn't be any problems at all. Yet California seems to be awash in these sort of cases. Daveggio and Michaud had sexual desires that were destructive. Their selfishness meant that they didn't mind doing horrible things to others. But as long as they didn't get caught, why would they stop? I'm rather surprised that they didn't live in Sonoma County, a center of greedy "do your own thing" hedonism for the Bay Area--a place where Christianity has no influence, because it is regarded as an obstacle to the endless pursuit of pleasure. California Prisons: What Sort of Scum Make the Rules There? I went looking for a link to a discussion of the Chowchilla kidnapping, and I found it. But I found something else disturbing in this San Francisco Chronicle news story about why one of the kidnappers was denied parole: The previous denials of parole came despite Woods' unblemished prison record. This time, however, Schmidt said the board's denial was based on the discovery of 700 hard-core pornography pictures, including bestiality and children, that were discovered in a random search of Woods' cell.So this sort of material used to be okay? When was hard-core child pornography ever legal in California? Why would California prison rules ever have allowed a prisoner to receive materials which are a felony for anyone to possess? U.S. Supreme Court To Reconsider Meaning of the Miranda Decision This Los Angeles Times story about the case suggests that the plaintiff, Martinez, has a pretty strong case against the City of Oxnard, California for excessive force. If the Times story accurately portrays what happened, police officers made a serious mistake that left this guy wheelchair-bound and missing an eye for life. But along with this claim, the suit alleges that a police officer who repeatedly questioned Martinez on the way to the hospital, and in the emergency room, had engaged in "coercive questioning" of Martinez. The defendants in this case are arguing that the police officer questioning Martinez was attempting to get Martinez's side of what happened before Martinez died. This was important for determining whether the police officers had acted improperly or not. The Miranda decision effectively prohibits all questioning of a suspect once he has asserted his right to be silent. The defendants in this case (and the Bush Administration) are arguing that only if the results of that questioning are used at trial would this continued questioning be unconstitutional. I am inclined to agree with this view, both for logical reasons, and for pragmatic reasons. The logical reason is this: if statements made by a suspect once he has asserted a right to silence are not used at trial, and those statements are not used to obtain other evidence (the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine), then the most that you can call such questioning is annoying. If not used at trial, a suspect is not injured by the questioning, or the answers that he gives. The pragmatic reason is this: there are times when police may need to question a suspect about a crime to prevent death or serious injury to someone else. Let me give a mundane hypothetical: the suspect kidnapped a diabetic child, and has the child confined somewhere. That child will need his insulin shot in the next few hours. The suspect is not going to tell the police where that child is, for fear that a live child might be a greater danger at trial than a dead child. (A live child could testify about the identity of the kidnapper; a dead child can't.) If this seems like a bizarre and forced construction--remember the Chowchilla kidnappings some years ago, where a whole busload of schoolkids were confined in a trailer buried underground. If the suspect asserts his right to be silent, and the current broad understanding of Miranda holds, then the police are violating the law by continuining to question the suspect about where that child is. If Miranda is understood only to prevent this information from being used at trial, the police will feel free to continue interrogation after the suspect asserts his right to be silent. They won't be prevented from obtaining the information needed to find that child. You can easily construct a similar scenario involving terrorists that have been arrested, and who have knowledge about a radiological bomb hidden in an American city. "Taken" The New York Times has an article about Spielberg's new miniseries Taken. I'm not blogging about Spielberg's miniseries, but about the "alien abduction" phenomenon. When Betty and Barney Hill's account of their abduction came out a couple of decades back, in the book Interrupted Journey I was a lot younger and a lot more accepting than I am today. I at least was prepared to accept the possibility that extraterrestials might, on occasion, have grabbed a human being, and done some sort of examination. But as the number of abductees increased to the point where they were able to hold conventions, I became very, very skeptical. So, what's the explanation? Many of the abductees have horrifying and shocking reports of invasive procedures by the aliens; some females report sexual activity. Is there anyone besides me that finds it most probable that the reason that there are so many of these reports is that it is easier for these adults to misremember childhood abuse as something that happened in adulthood? And their tormenters are misremembered as aliens, instead of abuse by a parent, a stepfather, or a priest that they loved or respected? Labels: child sexual abuse Sunday, November 24, 2002
How Media Coverage Encourages Murder An article in the San Francisco Chronicle today covered a forum that brought together a variety of people concerned with Oakland's again rising murder rate--including some of the reformed bad guys: Teenagers suggested more after-school programs, said the media needs to stop reporting the killings as a numbers game, and hissed when asked what they thought about Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's idea to boost the police force by 100. |
