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  • The New Republican Bill of Freedom

    With all this talk of changing the constitution for this and that (and yes, it’s strange that supposedly anti-big-government politicians always want to violate the explicit purpose of the constitution that protects the rights of citizens from big government), I’ve never quite understood the ultimately vision of conservative Republicans. What do they actually want? What if they weren’t restricted by politics, common sense, or the slightest sense of human decency? If the Bill of Rights is for commies, what are constitutional amendments that “real Americans” could rally behind?

    Let’s pick up a newspaper in the year 2013:

    WASHINGTON — Supported by super-majorities in both houses on Congress, the Republican president fulfilled a major campaign promise and sent The New Bill of Freedom to the states for constitutional ratification. Surrounded by senators, representatives, and five Supreme Court Justices on the steps of the Capital, President Palin marked this historic event with a speech to thousands of supporters:

    This Bill of Freedom reflects the original intentions of our Founding Fathers. The old Bill of Rights [boos from crowd] was all about Big Government protecting big terrorists [more boos].

    Oh, yes. No longer will terrorists and drug dealers and flag burners and abortionists and immigrants and sodomites and mainstream media — no longer will [making air quotes] “those people” be allowed to run amok because of — what do those big-L liberals [boos] call them? — technicalities! Today we get the rights we want. Today we get the freedom we deserve! [cheers]

    The new conservative Bill of Freedom [applause] fixes the Bill of Rights — or should I say [winks] Bill of Lefts? [laughter] — that were so easy for activist Democrat judges to misinterpret [loud boos]. One hundred years is big-G government and big-S socialism is enough! [mixed boos and cheers]

    With this New Bill of Freedom, America is ready for the twentieth century to bring real freedom to real Americans! [cheers] Eighty-seven years ago President Herbert Hoover stood right here and said:

    When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

    Oh yeah well today he’d have to be politically correct and say [winks] “woman” [light laughter]. Well today, lipstick and all [chuckles], I am that common woman! [applause]

    It is for us to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which Hoover and Reagan fought for. It is for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that this nation, under God [brief moment of silence], shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, will not perish from the earth! [loud applause, crowd breaks into spontaneous singing of campaign theme song, “We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!”]

    The New Republican Bill of Freedom

    Amendment I: Congress shall make no law prohibiting people’s right to pray, in either the Judeo or Christian tradition, in public or private; or abridging the freedom of spoken speech or the rights of corporations to give money to politicians.

    [No more separation of church and state. Brings back school prayer. And without naming any religion in particular, limits “others” from building houses of worship like they belong here. Also sensibly limits the liberal press and expansive interpretation of “speech.”]

    Amendment II: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    [No more grammar debate here.]

    Amendment III: Marriage shall be defined as a union between one man and one woman.

    [Banning gay marriage is much more important than whatever the Third Amendment used to say. You don’t know the Third Amendment anyway.]

    Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated but upon reasonable suspicion, supported by oath or affirmation.

    [Probable Cause is too high a standard. And why bother with all those other “technicalities”?]

    Amendment V: No innocent person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor shall private property be taken for public use. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy trial.

    [Why protect the guilty? The innocent have nothing to hide. And who miss grand juries?]

    Amendment VI: The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

    [Rights of the criminals again. Blah blah blah.]

    Amendment VII: Only persons born to US citizens are citizens of the United States.

    [That’ll fix the Fourteenth Amendment. Besides, a jury trial for common law disputes in excess of twenty dollar? Get real. The Seventh Amendment has been obsolete even since we abandoned the gold standard.]

    Amendment VIII: Punishment shall be appropriate to the crime.

    [Like we want liberal judges defining cruel and unusual. That’s how they ban the death penalty.]

    Amendment IX: The right to life of the unborn is paramount.

    [The old amendment was just some constitutional mumbo-jumbo anyway.]

    Amendment X: Respecting the rights reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, Amendments Thirteen through Sixteen are hereby repealed.

    [If you gotta look them up, how important could they be?]

  • Meanwhile, Mutiny in Juárez

    Meanwhile, Mutiny in Juárez

    “A bunch of angry, fed-up federal police in Juárez launched a mini-rebellion against some of their commanders Saturday, accusing them of corruption…. The bottom line is that nothing seems to be able to stop or even lessen the violence in Juárez.” So says the El Paso Times, just across the border, in the peaceful twin city of El Paso.

    Probably, at some point in their career, every police officer has wantedto do this. It’s like a pissed-off flight attendant jumping out on the slide of an airplane. But the editorial board of the El Paso Timesfigures:

    Perhaps the last straw was the perception of police officers that their commanders’ corruption and links to drugs and the cartels were putting the officers’ lives in danger. That could be quite a motivation.

    Indeed.


    The caption of these AP photos by Raymundo Ruiz says:

    Federal police agents beat a fellow officer after a top fellow officer was detained at his hotel room by his subordinates in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010. Around 200 federal police officers protested Saturday demanding the dismissal of fellow police inspector Salomón Alarcón Olvera, aka “El Chaman”, accusing him of being linked to drug cartels and having participated in kidnappings, executions and extortions.

  • “Presidente Fox? There are men here to see you”

    The crack research-librarian staff here at Copinthehood Incorporated (aka, my wife) reminds me that President Vicente Fox tried to do something about drug legalization as president but then backed down under US pressure.

    Indeed, I dug through the basement archives here in at 1 Copinthehood Plaza and dusted this off from the L.A. Times on May 3, 2006:

    Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic.
    …
    The law would be among the most permissive in the world, putting Mexico in the company of the Netherlands.[*]
    …
    Selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime in Mexico. Anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police [and fined]. But it includes no imprisonment penalties.
    …
    Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Tuesday that Fox would sign the measure, calling it an important tool in the fight against drug trafficking.
    …
    Fox, whose term ends in December and who is barred by law from seeking reelection, has been considered a strong ally of the U.S. anti-drug effort. He has said the current drug war was triggered when he began arresting top leaders, including Osiel Cardenas, who allegedly runs the Gulf cartel from prison.

    Apparently that night there was a knock on his door from some burly gringo men with dark sun glasses and briefcases. It wasn’t the Blues Brother. MSNBC reported:

    Weighing in, the U.S. government Wednesday expressed a rare public objection to an internal Mexican political development, saying anyone caught with illegal drugs in Mexico should be prosecuted or given mandatory drug treatment.

    “U.S. officials … urged Mexican representatives to review the legislation urgently, to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico, and to prevent drug tourism,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judith Bryan said.

    Apparently Fox got an offer he couldn’t refuse. Apparently to the tune of four-hundred-million US dollars a year for at least four years.

    At the time, Fox was worried about 650 to 700 drug-war deaths a year. But the bill died and the war on drugs got ramped up. Since 2006 there have been about 7,000 drug-war deaths a year (though nobody knows for sure).

    [* If only Mexico could be in the company of the Netherlands. The Netherlands resists US pressure to fight the drug war and partly as a result has a murder rate just a fraction of the US and just a tiny fraction of Mexico’s.]

  • Legalize Drugs, Says Former Mexican President

    Reuters reports:

    “Legalization does not mean that drugs are good … but we have to see (legalization of the production, sale and distribution of drugs) as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to earn huge profits,” Fox wrote in a posting over the weekend. “Radical prohibition strategies have never worked.”

    Newsweek adds:

    Fox, a member of the same conservative National Action Party as Calderón, was president between 2000 and 2006 and was a staunch U.S. ally in the war against drugs. But he says he now favors legalizing drugs.
    …
    Fox also backs critics who say it was a bad idea to send the Mexican Army to support police as they battle the cartels that smuggle cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines, among other substances, across Mexico and into the United States. “They are not prepared for police work,” he said, in apparent response to allegations of Army brutality. “They should return to the barracks.”

    Too bad Fox didn’t wise up when he was still president. I guess you get wiser when you’re no longer on the DEA’s payroll.

  • Al Baker steps to the plate… It is high, it is far…

    …It is gone!

    Al Baker clears the bases and the New York Timesis back on top!

    Al Baker is a man I don’t know. Never met him. Never spoken to him (at least I don’t think I have). But I know his name because the man is good reporter on the police beat for the New York Times. When I see Al Baker’s name on the byline, I know I’m going to get a good story with no B.S.

    Without fanfare, Baker (perhaps suspiciously eying the journalistic wreckage left by his colleagues) steps up the plate and hits a home run. Maybe he had the weekend off, but better late than never.

    Kudo’s to you, Mr. Baker. Well done, as usually. And thanks for not quoting anybody’s mom.

    Seriously, though, this is what I want in my news story. Real reporting. Not easy quotes. Compare Baker’s writing to the earlier articles. It’s like night and day. As a sportscaster might say, “All you young journalists out there, take note. This is how you play the game!”

    [p.s. Am I getting old? If I said, “It could be… It might be… it is!” Would anybody still get that home-run-call reference?]

  • Why cops hate the New York Times

    Most cops hate the newspaper. I don’t. But that’s probably because growing up, there was more newspaper blood in my family than police blood. And a healthy freedom of the press is one of the founding principles of this nation.

    And just think for just a few bits every day, comics, sports, news, opinion, it’s all dropped off on my stoop every morning (well, not the comics. I have to get my comics online)!

    But police often have good reason to hate the press. Reporters, and it must be taught in journalism school or something, feel obliged to get all sides of the story. Sounds good… unless, of course, you understand that all opinions are not equally true. Sometimes, especially with crime stories, there really aren’t two sides to the story. Sometimes, as a reporter, you shouldbe biased (if bias is a taboo word, how about “be willing to reach a conclusion”?).

    Say a criminal gets shot by police. He had a gun. Some police spokesperson says as much. Duly noted. But then you talk to the dead guy’s mother who says, “Pookie was an angel. He would never hurt nobody! And he was home with me at the time he got shot.” Why, the mother may actually believe this. Or maybe not. But the gentle reader trying to figure out the truth sees this and says, “Hmmm, there are two sides of the story. I bet the truth lies somewhere in between.” Actually… sometimes… no. And it’s the reporter’s job to get the truth and not just lay out all the junk and let the reader decide what’s true.

    Now here’s a rule of thumb: don’t value mothers as objective determiners of their babies’ character. Nor should you value a criminal’s friends as objective determiners of the criminals non-criminal activity.

    Now the Timespresent a story that can at best be described as a police clusterf*ck and hints at a very bad police-involved shooting, with obligatory references to Sean Bell and hints at the idea that all the bullets were fired by police. The first headline said, “After 50 Shots in Harlem, One Dead and 6 Hurt.” Wow. Well, that certainly got my attention. And here’s this from the August 9th story by William Rashbaum, Karen Zraick, and Ray Rivera:

    The witness accounts retold by the police were at odds with what some other witnesses said had happened. Robert Cartagena, 19, Mr. Alvarez’s cousin, and another witness, Shariff Spencer, Mr. Alvarez’s friend, said they never saw Mr. Alvarez fire a gun. [well what do you expect them to say?]

    Mr. Alvarez’s lawyer [whose job it is to defend his client regardless of guilt] … said his client … motioned “no” when asked if he had had a gun or fired one.

    Now let’s go back to the August 8th storyby Trymaine Lee and Colin Moynihan:

    Yet questions were being raised among some witnesses as to whether the police had acted appropriately.
    …
    When that first shot went off, “Angel was still punching,” Mr. Spencer [a friend of Alvarez] said.

    “Never once did you hear, ‘Freeze,’ ” he said. “Never once did you hear, ‘Stop.’ Never once did you hear, ‘N.Y.P.D.’ ”
    …
    Several residents expressed outrage at the shooting, saying the police were overly aggressive.

    “People feel like they have no concern for life,” Sean Washington, a television producer who lives down the street from where the shooting occurred, said of the police. Before the gunfire started, he added, the D.J. at the block party said over the loudspeaker “how good a feeling it was because there was no violence. It was all love.”

    See… it was All Love. And then police showed up. Two guys just in a little scuffle and police blow them away.

    Having been a police officer, I assume — no, I know — that nine times out of ten the police version of the story is closer to the truth than any “witness” account.

    Now I wasn’t there. So I don’t know what happened. But I bet it’s pretty close to the Post’s account:

    Moments before a police-issued semiautomatic slug fatally ripped through Soto’s chest, he allegedly pulled his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver on Alvarez, a small-time hood who was getting the better of him in a fistfight, sources said.

    Alvarez lunged for the weapon, and it went off twice during the struggle, attracting the attention of officers nearby, witnesses told police.

    Alvarez, 23, then allegedly fired at Patrolman Douglas Brightman — prompting the uniformed cop and three officers on the other side of the block to return a volley of 46 rounds, police said.

    Also, the A.P.’s Colleen Long has a good story.

    The Daily Newssays: “NYPD officials initially said Alvarez killed Soto with the revolver, before shooting at four cops who returned fire. Yesterday, cops said the revolver was in Soto’s waistband but Alvarez took it from him and shot at a uniformed officer with it.” For the record, Soto was killed and Alvarez shot many many times but is alive.

    So what’s my point? I’m not certain yet. But why does the Timessee fit to quote Ms. Craft, Alvarez’s bother, saying her brother has a job (auto mechanic) and a 2-year-old son? Well maybe because the story is trying to make Alvarez look like a victim, which makes police out to be the criminals.

    But if we want a character study on Soto and Alvarez, why not tell the whole story? The Postis willing to call Alvarez a small-time thug. And apparently there’s nothing small time about Soto. According to the Daily News:

    Both had records. Alvarez had two prior arrests, including one for gun possession and trying to run down a cop with a car, for which he served two years. Soto had been arrested eight times, including for burglary.

    But I can hear people saying, “So maybe they had trouble in the past. But how long can you hold that against them? Poor kids.” Whatever. And I have a bridge to sell you.

    Michael Feeney of the Daily Newsdigs up a Twitter account (I found this under the name BooBillzMB) and writes: “Luis Soto, slain in Harlem shootout, painted himself as tough gangbanger on Twitter.

    “I go 2 da grave b4 I be a b—h n—-! Fa’realll,” he wrote July 23.

    He posted photos of himself flashing gang signs, or holding a new iPhone, an iPad and cocktails.

    In one photo, he looked out at the camera over a thick fan of crisp new $50 bills – many thousands of dollars worth.

    Though he had no job, he planned to trade in his BMW 760, a $130,000 car, for an equally pricey Mercedes-Benz CL550, he tweeted.

    A turf rivalry between Harlem, where Angel Alvarez lives, and the Bronx, where Soto was from, surfaced in his tweets. “Not for nothin da BRONX Got More Real N—-s Den HARLEM,” he wrote July 28.

    Friends said Alvarez and Soto had an argument two weeks ago that led to their clash Sunday in Harlem.

    With a past record of illegal gun possession and assaults on police, and with a running feud with Soto, perhaps Alvarez’s biggest mistake was bringing a knife (or his fists) to a gun fight. Was Soto a b*tch n***a? Not for me to say, but he got his wish about going to the grave first. Was Alvarez just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I doubt it. Is any of this relevant? Actually, yes.

    Because imagine going to work and getting into a gunfight. Just another day at the office? Imagine the fear as you see a muzzle flash and think you’re going to die. Imagine the guilt of learning that you almost killing another officer. Imagine how lucky you feel to be alive. Imagine the relief of going back to your wife and kids. And for this the department and city you serve make you get a piss test and strips you of your gun “pending investigation.” And then in the papers your friends and family read about how you might have killed an innocent hard-working might for no reason.

    Did police behave correctly in using lethal force and shooting 46 times at these two fighting men with a gun? Absolutely. I don’t want to go too far, but it seems like the least we could do is appreciate what these officers went through and thank them for risking their life while just doing their job.

  • Schoolcraft sues NYPD for $50 Million

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to sort itself out. Here’s what I’ve already said on this one.

    [Update: A link to the lawsuit.]

    (Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)

  • View From Across the Pond

    The Guardianhas one, two, and threestories on the war on drugs.

  • In the Windy City, Blowing People Away

    One easy way to tell if people have no relation to the criminal justice system is if they believe it actually works… you know, works as in guilty people get convicted after a fair trial, innocent people walk free, and victims feel like justice has been served.

    If you believe that, you watch too much TV.

    The Chicago Sun-Timesis looking back at a particularly bloody weekend in 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.

    So far, not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year.

    Only one suspected triggerman — a convicted armed robber caught with the AK-47 he allegedly used to blow away his boss — is in jail awaiting trial.

    Three other victims said they know who shot them but refused to testify.

    Refused to testify? Now you might be thinking, “Serves them right if they won’t testify.” Sometimes indeed, criminals won’t testify and it’s hard to care too much about them. But other times victims are scared to testify, which is much more troublesome.

    But here is where it gets interesting. Let’s say you dotestify: “After Gamble took the witness stand against the guy who he says shot him, a judge ruled Gamble wasn’t credible because of his criminal record and found the suspect not guilty.” Ouch.

    How many shooting victims don’t have a record (answer: almost none)? But if you’ve got a bad record your testimony isn’t credible? Any wonder why people get away with murder?

    Last year, according to the Sun-Times, more than 90 percent of Chicago shootings resulted in no charges. With odds like that, you’d have to be a chump notto kill.

  • On the night train, with Charles Rangel

    It bothers me a bit when people (politicians included) blame politicians and “Washington” for our nation’s woes. Or when politicians encourage cynicism and promote the idea that running our country doesn’t take any special skill set or intelligence.

    Given his troubles, I thought I’d repost an edited version of something I wrote about my chance meeting with Charles Rangel in 2008. I don’t like to see the man, after all he’s done for New York, being left out in the cold.

    Our system ain’t perfect, but it’s the best we got. And if we throw all the experienced bums out, we’ll have mediocre bums leading a mediocre country. Churchill said democracy is the worst system except all other. And I wouldn’t swap it for any other system in the world.

    In some ways being a politician is like being a cop. It’s a dirty world out there and there are a lot of parts that are morally gray. So everybody violates some rules some of the time. And if they want to get you, they can always find a way. I wonder how many of us could live up the ethical regulations we impose on others in the name of “good government”? I doubt I could.

    October 12, 2008
    I was talking to Charles Rangel last night. On the night train coming back from Boston.

    I was in the bar car and heard a strangely familiar gravely voice order a wine. “That must be Charles Rangel,” I thought. This guy was shorter than I imagined Rangel to be, but when I saw an official looking Congressional Lapel Pin, I knew for sure.

    I was kind of caught off guard and told him to keep up his good work. He thanks me and squeezed my shoulder and left. Back in my seat, drinking my Budweiser, I thought, “Man, I handled that poorly. First of all, I should bought him his wine. Second, why didn’t I tell him that I was my father’s son? They kind of knew each other and were sort of buddies… or at least that was my father’s version of the story.

    But in this case I got a second chance. I went up for beer number two and started talking with the cafe guy. We shot the shit about North and South, white and black, and corporal punishment (He was from Virginia, black, and pro). Anyway, it was a quiet train and we were chatting for about 20 minutes.

    Then Rangel returns, a bit disheveled. He orders a cheeseburger and goes to the bathroom. I notice the cafe guy goes through the motions but doesn’t actually pop the bag on the cheeseburger and put it in the microwave until Rangel comes out of the bathroom and comes back for his order. He has no idea who this is, I think.

    While Rangel is waiting, I tell him he knows my father, Charles Moskos.

    “The draftee!” He explains in his trademark voice. “We were both draftees. That’s the point, the poor shouldn’t be the only ones to serve.” Rangel once told my father that if it weren’t for the army (and a Greek sergeant in particular), he’d be a bum.

    I told Rangel my father had died recently, which he didn’t know. “He was young,” he said, “at least younger than me!” “I know,” I said with a grimace and a reassuring pat on his arm.

    The cafe guy asked Rangel if he wanted anything to drink. He said a Pepsi and gave the guy his money. “Let me get that for you,” I said! “No, no, that’s not necessary,” he said.

    I insisted, in part because I knew my father would have loved any story that involved me paying for the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s cheeseburger.

    So there we are, Charles Rangel and Peter Moskos, each trying to get the cafe man to take our money. But because the cafe man knew me and not Charles Rangel, he took my money. Rangel thanked me, said a few nice things about my father, and returned to his seat.

    Here is one of the most powerful men in America. Taking the night train. Tired. No entourage. Willing to talk.

    At Penn Station I watched Rangel get off the train. There he was, gentleman, congressman, 78-years-old, draftee, carrying his own bags. I offered to carry them for him. But he politely declined. I figure in this day and age you could get in trouble for grabbing a congressman’s suitcase, so all I could do was offer again. He declined again. We went up the escalator and said goodbye. There he went, Charles Rangel, walking off alone into the night at 3am.

    It made me proud to be an American.