Date Rape and College Campuses

      On this first day (with students) of a new school year, NPR ran a piece on date rape.  In a further step to curb the crises, app developers have several new tools out for smart phones.  One mentioned on the program was "Circle of Six".  I think this is a great idea, and I highly promote it.  I am curious, though, to take it to the next level.  The idea behind the app is that you preprogram six friends numbers into the phone, with a message of "I need help with a bad date", and in a bad situation, you hit one key, and the message goes out.  That is great, and I don't want to deride from the potential power to help this will be.  I am curious about the psychological effects of the six if they miss the text.  Again, this is not to say the product should be redesigned or taken off the shelf.  Simply asking questions.  What if you miss the text, out on the town, unable to effectively think straight.  What if you have your phone turned off?  What if?  I guess that is why it is six people, in the hope that one will be around.  What if the attacker is in the circle of six, as most date rapes are associates/friends?

      The app is being tested on a college campus for two years.  That has got to be tough for the school to allow the program to come in, as it requires that the school admit that date rape exists.  We all know, logically, that date rape happens at major institutions, including colleges, high schools, and the military, as well as in every day life.  Saying that publicly does not mean that a school is willing to do the same.  No school publishes their level of attacks.  There is an incentive to get the numbers down, but you still don't want to brag.  The organization in no way allows or encourages the action, but they still take all responsibility, and are expected to work to curb the actions.  But to do it discreetly.  That is what intrigues me about a school choosing to pilot the program.  Colleges (school) are very risk averse.  On the surface, every parent agrees that they want their child's school to do more to protect the students.  But, to openly admit you have a problem is to put an active bug in the mind of every parent that there is a need in the first place.  Mental illness is a major issue in the world, and everyone is willing to reach out to others to share phone numbers and encouragement, but ultimately, how many of us are willing to take the long journey for treatment and support that our friends require when they do admit to it?  The stigma attached to these issues is so large, it is a surprise that anyone is willing to take on the task. Great work, William Woods.  

       Another app just out (I don't remember the name), allows a victim to catalogue the incident, then do three things:  Report immediately, save the details for later (time to process, understand, cope), or to put the perpetrator on the radar, and report if another issue arises with the same person.  Interesting.  Power is shifting.  And I am glad.  

Duck Dynasty Faux Pas

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/gop-politicians-defend-39-duck-dynasty-39-star-184932178--abc-news-politics.html

      So, Phil from "Duck Dynasty" stated his personal beliefs to a national magazine.  Should the magazine have censored his comments, as they were possibly hurtful and damaging to his career?  Did it benefit the magazine to ask questions that led him to make comments that were seen as crude and destructive?  Who is responsible for his words?  In this society, a free society, with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, Phil solely is responsible for his comments.  What he says in an interview to the press is his responsibility.   Once it is out of his mouth, the magazine has a duty to its own profits to print what might catch attention, regardless of the consequences to Phil and his own income source.  No one would disagree with that.

     Phil is entitled to his opinion.  If this is how he feels, no one thinks they can truly change his heart.  But, as a public figure, his words have power.  When he makes a comment like what he did, comparing homosexuality to bestiality and multiple partners, his words carry more weight.  If he said this in his church, a bar with his friends, or in his own home (without cameras rolling) he has every right to speak his mind.  Unfortunately, when his thoughts become public, he is responsible for them.  Again, no one attempted to censor him.  No one has tried to block the publication of his words.  What he said is inflammatory because we are in a time of change, and the nation is trying to find a way forward.  The past is easy to go back to, because we know where we came from.

     This issue is being framed as an attack on religion and on free speech, both protected in the Constitution.  The only problem with this line of attack is that the Constitution was designed to protect individuals (through incorporation) and states (originally the purpose of the Bill of Rights) from federal intrusion in these areas.  As an individual I am allowed to say what I choose without the government acting against me.  I cannot, however, criticize another man without the threat of him acting against me.  If I criticize my boss, he has the right to punish me.  As a student, freedom of speech is limited somewhat.  Students cannot cuss or disparage other students.  There are numerous examples of freedom of speech carried out.  But, it can only be protection from a public (government entity) punishing an individual or group.  The government is not stepping in to restrict the thoughts or words of either Phil or other conservatives that may find comfort in his words.  The government has remained silent on this.  While private organizations (A + E is a private company) have spoken out about their disagreement with his words, GQ, A+E, GLAD, and the NAACP are all private organizations, and have as much right to publicly criticize his views, both public comments and religious views, as he does to criticize others.  Ultimately the buyers money will decide who is right in this.  It is not the choice of a few to misuse the Constitution to their own personal benefit.

        Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the controversy by comparing it to Miley Cyrus.  No one has censored Miley Cyrus, he argues, but they have a religious man like Phil.  Miley Cyrus does not have a long term contract with a television company.  She (I assume) has a contract with a recording company.  That company found her performance at the VMAs beneficial financially to themselves.  There was a lot of public outcry both from the mainstream media, the left and the right about Miley Cyrus' performance.  But, record sales stayed high.  In the case of Phil, there was outcry from many sources for his comments.  The company that holds his contract (A+E) felt they wanted to distance themselves from this controversy.  They chose to suspend his contract, and they had the contractual right to do so.  If Miley were still working for Disney, presumably they would do the same.  Miley was just working for a company that allowed greater latitude.  That is the difference.  This is and never was an issue of the First Amendment, and freedoms from government intrusion.  It is the freedom of companies to choose what is in their own self interest.  Please don't muddy the waters.

Link following up on Power and Authority

Following up on our study of the LAPD, power, and authority, I came across this link.  This is the site I cite often in class, so no surprise.  What can you interpret from the graphs, though?  The author of the post sums it  up for you.  If one were to leave the provacative title off, and just look at the graphs, would it cause the same reaction?  Something to build on. . .


Racial Profiling link

Mistrial Declared in Murder Trial

Judge declares mistrial in 2007 drive-by murder case
By TONY RIZZOThe Kansas City Star
“I knew him prior.”
Those four words uttered recently by a police detective in front of a jury prompted a Jackson County judge Wednesday to dismiss the murder case against a Kansas City man.
The dismissal “with prejudice” means that prosecutors cannot re-try Markus D. Lee for the 2007 drive-by killing of Eliseo Thomas. Assistant Public Defender Molly Hastings requested, and the judge ordered, that Lee be released Wednesday.
It was the third time this decade that Lee, 25, was charged with committing a murder and the third time he has avoided conviction.
Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar could not be reached Wednesday about whether he will seek an appeal.
Kansas City police officials said they wanted to see the judge’s written order before commenting. The judge said he planned to have the written order available Monday.
In Wednesday’s oral ruling, Circuit Judge Robert M. Schieber said he believed that the detective’s comment during Lee’s trial earlier this month was an intentional effort to “goad” Lee’s attorneys into seeking a mistrial because the case wasn’t going well.
Because he considered the mistrial to be the result of governmental misconduct, Schieber ruled that trying Lee a second time would violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy.
“It is with a great deal of angst that I do this,” Schieber said.
But the judge said that he had to hold law enforcement officers to the same rules and standards that attorneys must follow to ensure a “level playing field” in the courtroom.
“For me to not do that would render those rules meaningless,” he said.
Schieber said that if there was no sanction against such intentional misconduct then anytime a law enforcement officer felt a case “was going south” he could say something inappropriate and prompt a mistrial.
“I can’t allow that to happen,” Schieber said.
He noted that after he declared a mistrial in Lee’s case, the jurors and alternates told him that they would have voted unanimously for acquittal. They also told him that the detective’s statement about knowing Lee implied to them that he had been arrested previously.
That demonstrated that the comment was prejudicial, the judge said.
Lee, who has been in custody since shortly after the March 2007 incident, was charged along with two other men with killing Thomas and wounding three others during a drive-by shooting near 30th Street and Agnes Avenue. The shooting sparked a high-speed chase in which suspects fired shots at pursuing police officers.
The two other defendants are in custody pending their trials.
In 2006, a jury acquitted Lee on charges that he killed a man during a 2002 block party and later gunned down a witness to that crime. At trial, witnesses who had initially identified Lee changed their stories and said they didn’t witness the shootings.
His trial for allegedly killing Thomas began Nov. 9 and was close to wrapping up Nov. 12 when Detective Danny Phillips testified about collecting shell casings and obtaining a DNA sample from Lee after his arrest.
Phillips was being cross-examined by Hastings about when he collected the DNA sample when he added “I knew him prior.” Hastings moved for a mistrial, which Schieber granted.
She later filed the motion that Schieber ruled on Wednesday. Phillips could not be reached for comment after Wednesday’s ruling.
After Wednesday’s hearing, Hastings said she appreciated the judge holding police accountable.
“They are not exempt from following the rules,” she said.

Supreme Court facing the issue of Torture

Tracking new cases: Torture case returns
from SCOTUSblog by Lyle Denniston

NOTE: From time to time, the blog will examine significant new cases as they are filed at the Supreme Court. This post is one in that series. Some of these cases very likely will appear later in the blog’s Petitions to Watch feature when the Court is ready to consider them.

———————-

UPDATE: The case has been docketed as 09-227.

Lawyers for four Britons who formerly were held at Guantanamo Bay returned to the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking the first ruling by the Justices on claims of torture of terrorism suspects by U.S. agents. The new petition asked the Court to rule that the Constitution protects those held by the U.S. military or intelligence agencies from being tortured or abused, and to declare that a federal law protects them from discrimination based on their Muslim religion. They are challenging an April ruling by the D.C. Ciruit Court, rejecting for a second time their constitutional and legal challenges. The case is Rasul, et al., v. Myers, et al. , not yet assigned a docket number.

The Circuit Court, after once ruling that detainees had no constitutional rights, avoided any new ruling on the Britons’ constitutional claism after the case had been sent back to it by the Supreme Court last December. The Justices told the lower court to reconsider its prior decision in the wake of the Court’s 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, establishing a constitutional right for Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their captivity.

Instead, the Circuit Court panel in April responded by throwing out the case this time based on a finding of qualified immunity for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ten senior military officers sued in the case. The panel said it was taking an option created by the Supreme Court in another case last January to bypass a constitutional ruling and instead focus on officials’ immunity claim.

Whatever rights detainees might have as a result of the Boumediene ruling, that ruling came four years after the Britons had been released from Guantanamo, the Circuit Court concluded. It also renewed its earkuer ruling that the Britons could not claim religious bias under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, because they were not ”persons” within the Act’s meaning.

The new Circuit Court decision, the Britons claimed on Monday , was a “manifest refusal to abide by this Court’s mandate and give due effect to Boumediene on the constitutional issues raised in this case.” The Justices, they argued, must “affirm the Court’s authority and compel an inferior court to abide by its mandate.”

The petition, though, added that there were “even more compelling issues which demand this Court;s attention.” Those, it said, were “whether detainees imprisoned the United States at Guantanamo have a right to be free from abuse and humiliation in the practice of their religion, whether Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to be free from torture, and whether public officials who knowingly violate these rights can escape accountability for their conduct by raising the shield of qualified immunity when they cannot assert this defense in good faith.”

“Torture and religious humilation of Muslim detainees at Guantanmo stands as a uniquely shameful episode in our history,” the Britons said. “This petition enables the Court to remedy that stain on the moral authority of our nation and its laws, to overrule an obdurately insupportable exercise in statutory construction that effectively renders these [detainees], and other other detainees at Gujantnamo, non-persons, and to facilitate accountability for these terrible acts.”

The petition argued that the federal government had chosen the detention site at Guantanamo Bay “in a cynical attempt to avoid acocuntability for conduct that had long been held unconstitutional when it occureed in U.S. prisons. But Guantanamo is not a Hobbesian enclave where [officials] could violate clear prohibitions on their conduct imposed by statute and regulations and then point to a purported constitutional void as a basis for immunity.”

The government officials sued in the case will have an opportunity to respond before the Justices act on the new appeal. Previously, the Obama Administration had opposed the Britons’ lawsuit when the case was being considered anew by the Circuit Court following the case’s return from the Supreme Court.

By coincidence, the new torture case reached the Supreme Court on the same day that Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., announced that he was ordering a preliminary inquiry “into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations.” He said it was too soon to say whether there would actually be any prosecutions resulting from the probe. His statement can be found here. It is unclear whether that investigation will cover claims of abuse at Guantanamo, as opposed to Central Intelligence Agency “black sites” in other countries.

How far is too far? Whose safety preempts?

240,000 dollars awarded to man forced to cover Arab T-shirt

Mon Jan 5, 7:22 pm ET

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.

Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

"The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling," said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU.

Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: "We will not be silent."

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said.

Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security.

Although the passengers, eight of them US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight.

Security has been at a high level in US airports since the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

However, rights groups and representatives of the Muslim community say the security measures have led to frequent discrimination and harassment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090106/ts_alt_afp/ustransportairsecuritymuslimsrights_090106002219/print

"Prickly City" takes on the Constitution and the Takings Clause

This is from the paper. All credit given, it is from December 31st, KC Star. Prickly City is one of the few comic strips that leans right. The storyline included here is originally from 2005, and deals with a fight for Walmart to build. Walmart has brought on controversy in Virginia, proposing to build within a mile of the entrance to the historic battle site of the Wilderness (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJpplE9BdF5uEHq4nJg1n5D9o45AD95F6OGG0).

Is Walmart what the founding fathers had in mind when they put in the Takings Clause? Where can we see its use today, in our area? Should Kansas City invoke it to build a light rail system? Where should the trail run? Who should be forced to give up their properties?