Yesterday the Vermont State Senate considered Senate Resolution 17, relating to problems associated with underage consumption of alcohol.

The resolution, drafted by Vermont Democrats, was extremely pro-liberty in that it criticizes a “one sized fits all solution” and champions the states’ ability to deal with the issue of alcohol consumption differently. Vermonters have been debating lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

Since this was only a resolution, it will not change the law, however it will be forwarded to the Vermont congressional delegation because it passed by one vote! The resolution concludes, “[T]he Senate of the State of Vermont urges Congress to authorize the states to address the problems associated with underage consumption of alcohol by obtaining waivers from federal law to avoid triggering federal funding penalties.”

Vermont’s legislature is a lot like that of Massachusetts, with very few Republicans even existing. Many of Vermont’s Republicans tend to be more libertarian-leaning, which is evidenced by two Republicans voting with the 12 Democrats to pass the resolution by a single vote.

Senators Kevin J. Mullen and Vincent Illuzzi were the two courageous Republican lawmakers who voted with the Democrats.

Mullen is from Rutland, owns the Finger Lakes Drive-In, and has been a member of the Senate since 2003. Prior to that, he served in the Vermont House since 1999. He has held a plethora of different leadership positions in Rutland.

Vincent Illuzzi (pictured) has represented the Essex-Orleans Senate district since 1980. He was first elected at age 27, the youngest person to be elected at the time. He’s also the Essex County State’s Attorney.

Congrats to Senators Mullen and Illuzzi!

In February, The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a “fusion center” that “collects intelligence from both the local agencies and the DHS and uses these combined sources to analyze threats and better combat terrorism and other criminal activity”, labeled some Ron Paul supporters and other constitutionalists as militia members.

On July 28, Missouri RLC Chairman Rob Hillman (above, center) offered testimony to the Interim Committee on State Intelligence Analysis Oversight regarding the MIAC report. That bipartisan Committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Dixon and Vice-Chaired by RLC-endorsed Rep. Jim Guest, was formed to gather public testimony about the MIAC fusion center in Jefferson City and the fusion center “MIAC Report” leaked to the public in February. The Committee is to report to the entire House of Representatives its findings.

On March 31, the Missouri RLC Board resolved unanimously to encourage the State Legislature to create a permanent MIAC oversight Committee. Rep. Jim Guest, Chairman of the REAL ID and Personal Privacy Committee, also sponsored HB 1138 to only permit MIAC to engage in constitutional activities in the future.

With a stroke of his pen, Texas Governor Rick Perry may soon give Child Protective Services a new power: the ability to pick up your kids without your consent.

So the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, along with the Texas Home School Foundation and the Free Market Foundation, are waging war against SB 1440. The bill features a last-minute amendment tacked on by Democratic Rep. Patrick Rose that gives Child Protect Services the power to transport a child for purposes of an investigation without a hearing or parental consent. Instead, the agency needs only an affidavit that says there’s a “fair probability” of abuse.

If the bill became law, a judge would be able to grant Child Protect Services a court order similar to a criminal search warrant, allowing a CPS worker to immediately enter the home and, if necessary, remove the child and secure medical and mental-health records as part of an investigation. It could be done without notifying the parent in advance.

In the below video, Texas RLC member Pierre DeRochemont speaks at a June 10 Houston rally in opposition to the bill.

A feisty 72-year-old great- grandmother was tasered after a police officer pulled her over for speeding.

Video released by a Travis County Constable’s Office shows Deputy Chris Bieze confronting 72-year-old Kathryn Winkfein after stopping her for speeding on May 11 just outside Austin.

At first, the great-grandmother did refuse to sign her speeding ticket, but she then agreed to do it. The deputy did not allow her to do so, instead pushing her and warning her that he would use the taser if she did not move in the direction he wanted her to move in.

Mrs. Winkfein was going 60 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone. Why couldn’t the deputy simply have given her to the paper to sign when she agreed to sign it? Alternatively, why couldn’t he have sent the ticket to her house like a standard bill?

At this blog, I have previously called for a taser ban. Tasers have become weapons of choice for law enforcement officers in essentially any situation they feel the need to use the taser. The arbitrary use of the taser would stop if tasers were banned entirely.

Below is the video of Kathryn Winkfein being tasered, in my view, unnecessarily:

I was very interested to see the reaction of many Republicans to the over-the-top behavior of the extreme right in the wake of the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller earlier this week. On The Next Right they quickly removed an offensive article and comments had loudly condemned the author. On Little Green Footballs they posted a substantial article condemning commenters and posters on several other right-leaning blogs for their comments about Tiller. These reactions give a clear impression that more and more mainstream Republicans are fed up with the fanaticism of the religious right, sickened over their behavior over the Tiller issue and just about ready to give them the boot.

Is it possible that this incident is the straw which finally broke the camel’s back and has created an unhealable rift between rational conservatives and the extremists of the religious right? Even Republicans who are socially conservative seem to have had enough of the extremist rhetoric and support for violence coming from people like Fred Phelps and Randall Terry. They seem to have woken up to the fact that the fanaticism and terrorism they oppose in the Islamic world is not much different from the beliefs held by some they considered allies.

As Barry Goldwater pointed out many years ago, the one thing which Republicans ought to be extreme about is liberty and on all other issues they ought to be rational and pragmatic. Maybe that lesson which he spent decades trying to teach with his own actions, is finally sinking in.

The obsession with legislating morality and with opposition to abortion and gay rights is really not part of the core Republican agenda. These ideas and the fanaticism they inspire were brought into the party through its alliance in the post-Reagan era with religious conservatives. Historically, Republicans have had a laissez faire attitude, not just to the economy, but also on moral issues. Republicans used to be dispassionate, leaving moral decisions in the hands of individuals and keeping government out of the picture. It seems like the pendulum might be swinging back in that direction.

As Abraham Lincoln said many years ago, our nation and by extension the Republican Party, was “conceived in liberty” and that idea of individual liberty ought to be the basis of every policy and every decision which Republicans make. There is very little question that abortion is a sin, but shouldn’t that sin be a matter of personal responsibility to be resolved between the individual and his or her soul and church and god? Once you get government involved, a change in policy or administration could as easily mean forced abortion and sterilization as you have in China as it could mean protecting unborn fetuses. Putting such personal decisions in the hands of government can only work out badly when there is the potential to go to either extreme.

This change in attitude in the GOP seems real and very significant. It has been building for years, starting with uneasiness with many Bush administration policies and perhaps culminating with the Tiller incident. That doesn’t mean that I expect a wholesale casting out of the religious right, but it does seem as if the more reasonable elements of the religious wing of the party are finally realizing that they have to distance themselves from the exrtremists, and perhaps put broader priorities first if they want to continue to play a role in the party and if they want that party to be successful. Extremism has been like an anchor dragging the GOP down and if the party cannot cast itself free of that extremism and chart a better course for itself it will never be successful.

Fanaticism and extremism breed violence and terror and are the enemies of liberty. If we are determined to fight them in the War on Terror how can we be less vigilant in opposing them at home? If we are to have a Republican party which makes liberty its first priority, then it must reject extremism and intolerance in every form. We can still embrace conservative and moral values, but we must accept that these are personal values and that only evil and oppression can come from giving government the power to dictate morality and institutionalize the prejudices of religious fanatics.

According to an article from The Associated Press, “Guantanamo [is] a political win GOP needed.” The story is referencing the vote in the Senate that occurred earlier today. In a vote of 90 to 6, the Senate overwhelmingly opposed President Obama’s effort to close the prison that harbors accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Every Republican member of the Senate passed on the opportunity to recognize that terrorist combatants do have Constitutional rights and that protections of the Bill of Rights apply to all persons under the jurisdiction of the U.S. regardless of where in the world that jurisdiction prevails.

As you know, one of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to order the closing of the controversial prison for terrorist suspects within a year. Obama had campaigned on the issue, but Republicans pounced on what they correctly asserted to be a critical flaw: the lack of detailed plans for where the roughly 240 detainees would go if the Cuban prison were shut down.

On that point, the town of Hardin, Montana (pop. 3,400) has volunteered to house 40% of the detainees (about 100 of them) in a state prison facility that is vacant.

Greg Smith, Economic Development Director in Hardin, says that there are 464 beds in the facility and over 120 jobs could be created by moving those prisoners to Hardin.  With flat land, a state-of-the-art corrections facility, and a Mayor (and City Council) willing to house the suspects, all it would have taken was a simple Senate vote in favor of closing Gitmo.

That vote, however, would require Senators to have a backbone and LEAD the country — something foreign to them.  Only six Senators, all from the far left wing of the Democrat Party, had the courage to vote in favor of the funding to move the captives to U.S. soil.

Why should we house these accused terrorists in the U.S.? The fact is that housing them in Gitmo has denied the terrorist suspects their constitutional rights and there is simply no possibility that piecemeal changes in law could create a legal system at Guantanamo equal to the U.S. criminal justice or courts martial systems.

Additionally, the detentions of the terrorist suspects are only temporary expedients that apply only in the field of combat according to U.S. law. Since we’re not at war with Cuba, the legitimate idea of temporarily detaining combatants in a war zone does not apply.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the abuses at Guantanamo Bay carried out at the beckon call of high-level government officials include widespread abuse:

• solitary confinement of detainees for periods exceeding a year;
• sleep deprivation of detainees for days, weeks, or months;
• exposure of detainees to prolonged temperature extremes;
• beatings of detainees;
• threats of transfer to a foreign country for torture;
• torture in foreign countries or at U.S. military bases abroad before transfer to Guantánamo;
• sexual harassment and rape or threat of rape against detainees;
• deprivation of medical treatment for serious conditions, or treatment granted only for “cooperating”; and
• “short-shackling,” where wrists and ankles are bound together and to the floor for hours or day.

I realize these suspects are accused of being terrorists and several of them were involved in the 911 attacks. I have tremendous sympathy for victims (and their families) of these accused terrorists and am quite convinced that the detainees at Gitmo are quite literally the scum of the earth.

That said, those accused of crimes in a nation governed by the rule of law are entitled to equal treatment under the law and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment as well as protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Guantanamo captives are entitled to the protection of the United States Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment includes “… nor shall [any person] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …”.  Further, the Eighth Amendment guarantees freedom from “cruel and unusual punishment” by government.

In Furman v. Georgia (1972), Justice Brennan wrote that “[t]here are … four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is ‘cruel and unusual’.” They include:

- The “essential predicate” is “that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
- “A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
- “A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
- “A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”

The torture procedures that the Bush Administration, the Republicans in Congress, and the spineless Democrats who purport to be civil libertarians have gone along with violate constitutional protections and are clearly ‘cruel and unusual’ tactics under the definition of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The types of torture that have been used against suspected terrorists also violate the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture (both signed by the U.S.).

Moreover, the techniques are not effective. According to the U.S. Army Interrogation Field Manuel 34-52 (1992), “Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

And according to the Center for Constitutional Rights,

“If someone has information, they are just as likely, if not more so, to disclose the information after non-abusive interrogation tactics. Second, many who are interrogated do not have information to give. Third, whether or not a person has information, he or she will likely confess to anything to stop torture; thus the information obtained is never reliable.”

Quoth the AP article: “Republicans have searched mightily for a good political issue this year as their traditional three Gs — gays, guns and God — have lost some steam. Now a fourth G — Guantanamo Bay — is handing them big boost.”

The issue of Guantanamo may be giving Republicans a boost in popular support, but it is at the sacrifice of the U.S. Constitution and a respect for the rule of law.

Over the last eight years, the Bush Administration has systematically dismantled some of the most important rights and protections of the United States Constitution.

The time to stand up for the Constitution is NOW.  Americans oppose the Bush-Cheney torture policies and a free nation based on the rule of law requires more of its government and its elected officials.

Like something out of a dystopian novel by Philip K. Dick or George Orwell, the House of Representatives has voted to endorse the idea of prosecuting people for the thoughts in their heads rather than actual crimes they commit in the real world.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913) passed the House last week with a 247 to 175 vote. Although most Republicans opposed it, 18 of them supported it. Support came overwhelmingly from Democrats, only 17 of whom voted against it. The bill will now be sent on to the Senate where there is some concern that with even less input from Republicans, the scope of the bill will be expanded to include unpopular speech as a hate crime. If it’s going to be stopped it will also have to be in the Senate, because if it passes there it will certainly be signed into law.

No one should ever be murdered or be targeted for robbery or violence because of their race or religion or sexual orientation, but there isn’t any other justifiable reason why they should be subjected to these crimes either. The crimes are just as unpleasant for the victim regardless of what the mindset or motivation of the criminal is.

We already have laws on the books at the state and federal level to appropriately punish any possible crime based on the severity of the harm done and even considerations like “special circumstances” of unusual cruelty or the age or nature of the victim. What has never been a factor in criminal prosecution is motivation of the criminal, because crimes are wrong regardless of what motivates them. The man who steals to feed his family is still a thief. The man who kills a child because the child kept him awake by crying is still a murderer. Someone who is beaten and left in a coma suffers just as much and is just as much a victim regardless of whether the motivation was robbery, his sexual orientation or the random madness of the attacker.

Our legal system is based on the idea that all men are equal under the law and that you get the same justice if you’re rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. A victim is a victim and a criminal is a criminal; crimes are punished because they are crimes, not because of who committed them or who they targeted. That’s a fair and unbiased application of justice. When you start creating special classes of victims or of criminals, you take the fairness out of the system and grant special privileges to some people which others don’t enjoy. You set some people above others, declaring that their suffering is more important just because of who they are. To do this makes the law unequal and oppressive, and is absolutely antithetical to the idea of a society based on universal equality.

If you accept the doctrine of racial inequality which is behind this hate crimes bill and that some victims are more victimized because of who they are or what the criminal thought about them, then the next logical step is to start treating criminals differently based on considerations like race or gender or sexual preference. Murder is only assault if you’re a woman. Robbery isn’t even a crime if you’re a member of an ethnic minority. A beating is a friendly handshake if the perpetrator is gay. It’s the road to the complete breakdown of justice, because for the law to be just it must be applied equally.

Look at it another way. If the sentence for murder is life and a racial motivation adds 10 years to the sentence as this bill proposes, then you are giving out 10 years in jail solely for being a racist. Set the murder, which is already a crime, aside and you are punishing someone solely for the thoughts in his head. You couldn’t send someone to jail for thinking racist thoughts and writing them down and even publishing them. Why should you be able to add to his sentence for thinking those thoughts while committing a crime? The most scary part is that the next step from here is punishing the thoughts without even bothering to have an associated crime.

Ordinarily federal law only applies in federal jurisdiction, so a law like this would do nothing for anyone except the occasional gay park ranger who gets mauled by a homophobic bear. But this bill includes a particularly pernicious provision to provide grants from the federal government to local law enforcement specifically for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. This program is similar to programs from the War on Drugs, which blurred the line between state and federal jurisdiction and provided incentives for gratuitous investigations and prosecutions to keep the federal dollars coming in.

Under the grant program local law enforcement can get up to $100,000 a year and material assistance from federal agencies. In return all they have to do is let the feds come into their jurisdictions and play an expanded role in pursuing hate crimes. Of course, if they want that federal money to keep coming they need to find and prosecute hate crimes. This leaves law enforcement actively looking for crimes which they can define as hate crimes to justify the federal grant money they are receiving.

When there’s a profit motive you can guarantee that investigators are going to find hate crimes everywhere and prosecutors are going to pursue convictions as hard as they can. There won’t actually be any more hate motivated crimes than there were before, but there will certainly be more people spending extra time in jail because it was profitable to add a hate crimes charge to the case against them.

The situation is reminiscent of the Fugitive Slave Law which was in place before the Civil War, where judges were paid $5 if they ruled that the accused was a free man, but $10 if they ruled that he was an escaped slave. Not surprisingly a lot of free blacks were forced into slavery under this law in a gross miscarriage of justice which helped to push the nation into civil war.

The first truth held to be self-evident in our Declaration of Independence is that “all men are created equal,” but when you start dividing them into groups and giving those groups special legal protections you are making some more equal than others. This law debases the entire legal system, making a mockery of the principle of equality before the law on which our justice system is based. When you give select groups a superior status in the eyes of the law, you make everyone else a second-class citizen. That may appear like justice to some, but it only looks like justice when it cuts your way. When it’s your thoughts or your unpopular ideas which are targeted it’s going to look like tyranny, because that’s exactly what it is.