Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days 881
Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"
Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, we should be able to, within less than two hours, have an overly aggressive "lock down" a 700 building, 2600 acre, 30000+ person city-like area because of an isolated domestic incident in a dorm, but we shouldn't have an overly aggressive response against this kind of possible school violence?
To anyone who thinks Virginia Tech has ANY culpability here,
1. Remember what your response would be to ridiculous "zero tolerance" tactics on any topic, and
2. Read the below first.
Commentary included from here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org], and here [slashdot.org].
And yes, I believe this is "on topic" and highly related given the accusations that are being levied against VT.
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When what is believed to be a single, isolated shooting in a dorm happens on a 2600 acre public, open campus with hundreds of buildings, you can't assume that you're about to have the worst shooting incident (of any type) in US history.
Yet, people are already blaming Virginia Tech.
Would we close or "lock down" a city of 40000 people if there was a shooting? Because that's exactly what a campus of this size and type is (including students and faculty/staff).
No, but people are already calling for siren/PA systems in EVERY of HUNDREDS of buildings, of varying ages and constructions, centralized door locking/control and camera systems for not just outer building doors, but ALL doors.
The University reacted in a reasonable way. Yes, a shooter was "on the loose". Someone who had shot a person in a dorm, and the University immediately sent out notifications that such an event occurred; to be cautious and aware, and to report any suspicious activity to campus police. The area was "locked down", but after over two hours elapsed, there was no reason to believe that a madman was about to go on a random killing spree across campus.
This is not an elementary school. This is not a high school. This is a massive, open research campus with tens of thousands of people spreading over 2600 acres, with private, residential, and other buildings intermixed.
The only person to be blamed here is the shooter. And yes, he's dead. But Virginia Tech is not at fault.
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Colleges and universities do have the same kinds of procedures.
But a hospital is typically one building. Virginia Tech is hundreds of buildings - I believe close to 700 - of varying types, purposes, and ages. There is no central PA system or door locking system. Most of the buildings are wide open. They're intermixed with non-university lands and buildings, and span 2600 acres. Some of the buildings are over 50 and 100 years old. Do we retrofit literally tens of thousands of doors with centralized locking and cameras and install central warning/PA systems in all buildings, just because you might be the site of a madman's rampage?
There's security and prudence, and there's waste and ridiculousness.
And the area in the vicinity of the shooting was locked down and blanketed with police. It was determined to be a domestic-type, targeted incident. And by the time VT had a handle on the situation, thousands of students were already on their way to campus. Nothing happened for over two hours. Then what do you do when you have no means of directly communicating with everyone? Should the university have had a knee jerk to a shooting in one dorm, and before they even knew nearly anything about the situation, have canceled classes within the first 15 minutes? Even if they decided that, how do you contact everyone? Email? Facebook? The web? There would have been no practical way to notify everyone, meaning literally thousands of students would have made it t campus anyway, and then what do you do with them once there?
Lockdown is simple in a controlled setting or a high school or elementary school. But at a 40000-person public land-grant university with hundreds of buildings? I'm sorry, but Virginia Tech simply has no culpability here. This is going to result in a lot of additional security measures that are either artificial and useless, or not representative of a free and open society, or both. I'm sure it will result in several multimillion dollar lawsuits by families against VT, too. After all, you can't be angry at a dead killer.
This tragedy has exactly one culprit: the killer. The alternative is locking down something that is essentially the equivalent of a city when something bad happens, because there is a chance that something else bad might happen. And even if we wanted to do that, it's barely possible or practical on this scale. Even assuming it is or should be represents a failure to understand the scope and logistics here. It's not just "oh, it's just a little bit of money" or "how about mass SMS messaging?" It's nowhere near that simple and there simply would have been no way to reach anything but a fraction of the students even if they had wanted to immediately after the first shooting. Even the "delay" in notifying students of the first shooting, which is now being bandied about, is meaningless, because it would have told them nothing different: there was a shooting today in the dorms. It is being investigated. Be cautious and aware, and remember to always report anything suspicious to the police.
When you have a shooter in a hospital or elementary school, you lock it down.
When you have a shooter in one of several hundred buildings on a sprawling city-like campus with 40000 adults, you don't lock anything down unless you want to live in a vastly different society than I.
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So, if there's a shooting in a city of, say, 35000 people, what would you do with, say 700 or so buildings across over 2000 acres in the city center?
How would you communicate with those people? (Email is really the only practical different option for the university.)
Would you go into a temporary state of quasi martial-law because a "killer is on the loose"?
I can see locking down a high school. I can't see anything different Virginia Tech could have done, especially since thousands of students would already have been on their way to campus or class by the time the university even figured out what the response to the first situation was.
And no, the appropriate response isn't to immediately close and evacuate what is essentially a good-sized city at the first sign there might be a shooting (which would have been the only thing they could have even tried at 7:15am, which would have been ridiculous).
Any claims that Virginia Tech could or should have done something to prevent this represents a massive misunderstanding of the scope and logistics of the situation - and I mean massive - and represents the worst in 20/20 hindsight armchair quarterbacking. Not to mention a worrying tilt toward apparently wanting the kind of police state infrastructure we'd need to even THINK of "locking down" a 2600 acre campus with hundreds and hundreds of buildings.
An actual example of BEGGING THE QUESTION! (Score:1, Insightful)
Wrongful impronment indeed - but who is to blame? (Score:5, Insightful)
Article doesn't contain too much information, but the reg (byo grain of salt) sez [theregister.co.uk]: wtf? WMDs? I guess they just can't be found anywhre huh?
But what does the principal have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wasn't he interviewed by the police in the prescence of an adult immediately? Isn't there meant to be some advocate protecting the accused rights, especially with a 15 year old?
Surely a decent investigation should have gone something like:
cop: We have this recording of the threat.
Defender: Uhm. That doesn't sound much like this kid. Are you sure you got the right guy?
Defender and cop disappear. Re-appear later.
cop: Sorry about that. You're free to go.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad you clearly don't grasp anything I said and just latched onto "2600", though.
But if you think that a campus of this size and scope could have been, or, rather, should have been "locked down", it would require a pretty comprehensive (and much larger) police and central monitoring/camera/locking and building access infrastructure, which itself would be extremely costly and far from perfect, and also pretty much requires you to support the knee-jerk like response to "school violence" that we're talking about in this article.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
A proper response is quick, not clumsy. This is both quick and clumsy. VT was slow and clumsy (though clumsy seems unavoidable given VT's size).
The principal didn't put him in jail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:YRO??!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Principal owes public apology (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
So, you think you should have been emailed that something happened 15 minutes after it occurred, when chances are the police themselves didn't even have a handle on what happened yet, much less University administrators? Acting without thinking, right? Just like the school officials did in this case.
And if they'd emailed out something, it wouldn't have been to close the university because there was by all appearances a domestic shooting in a dorm - which do happen at universities, by the way. Hell, it probably takes a minimum of 15 minutes to even coordinate a mass email, knowing the bureaucracy of a campus that size. Within a couple of hours of what is believed to be an isolated incident with no real reason at the time to believe otherwise is perfectly reasonable.
A proper response is quick, not clumsy. This is both quick and clumsy. VT was slow and clumsy (though clumsy seems unavoidable given VT's size).
Your parenthetical statement at least shows some understanding of the situation here. Even IF they'd decided to cancel classes and close the University, that email probably wouldn't have been able to go out in any practical sense, and after having a very minimal handle on the situation, for at least 45 minutes to an hour. And even then, many students, and even faculty, would either never see it that morning, or already be on their way to class. And even if you could muster enough police presence to start going around locking buildings, how do you, in one hour, lock several hundred buildings, clear them, and then what do you do with the thousands of students already on campus?
Even in the best case lockdown scenario, if we're playing the "should have, could have, would have" game, what if there was then an outdoor shooting that killed 5 instead of an indoor one killing 32? 5 is better than 32? Except all we'd know about is the 5, and Virginia Tech would get raked over the coals for having a lockdown without thinking about it. Not to mention that we can't live in a state where we think that the worst shooting in US history may be about to occur, so we'd better react accordingly.
That's why I'm saying be careful what you wish for. We look at a daylight savings time story like this and scoff at its ridiculousness, and at the same time, believe that Virginia Tech should have made the same kind of reactive knee-jerk decisions without thinking and full consideration.
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
why tell the principal about it when you can be the principal?
Re:Can you say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Feel free to tell his principal how you feel about the whole guilty until proven innocent thing she has going on.
Email address removed
...so that you, too, can try, convict and punish on less than complete evidence.
Sheesh. Leave it to the lawyers and courts, please.
Re:But what does the principal have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've had no run-ins with police have you?
I have raised a child, two actually (Score:3, Insightful)
What's frustrating to me is when school officials "play detective" when they're so clearly untrained to do so. I've had to play detective at work, tracking down people doing bad things electronically. While it was interesting, I had absolutely no interest on doing anything other than gathering information to present to someone else. Jumping up and down and yelling "We got him!" sounds like poor deductive reasoning.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that people think a gov't is more than the sum of its parts, that it's somehow more responsible, more honourable, and less corruptible than the people that make it up. Watch the news for five minutes about the current US admin (or any other country's gov't for that matter) and it's obvious how flawed that notion is.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps someone was going to email her a go directly to jail card.
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
A lockdown is something you do with elementary school kids so they don't wander off before their parents show up. It's a measure to control the students, not a perpetrator.
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Timezones get British man wrongfully extradited to US for threatening E-mail"
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
wrongful imprisonment?
Not to mention slander, liable, defamation of character and abuse of process. The kid's 12, imagine the parade of child psychologists you could put together to go on about how expensive it's going to be to treat his self-image problems and damaged reputation.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to put yourself in this child's place. Innocent of wrong doing and accused by this man (points at principle at defense table) in a most callous and vile manner and being a criminal and a liar. Imprisoned for 12 long days. Subject to the abuses of the juvenile detention system, all alone in the dark. Separated from family and friends. Can you imagine what that might be like. The terror, the fear, the horror. And in the place of his parents. Having your child falsely accused, then further accused of lying...your child ripped from your arms by the police. I ask you to remember all these things while you consider how much it's worth for a child to get their self esteem back, for the parents to get their good name back and for this man (points at principle again) to pay for his part in this horrible, horrible travesty. No, money can't buy happiness...as the defense has so callously inferred...but it can buy the best therapists, confidence building camps and tutoring that money can buy. It can provide the family the means to move elsewhere, to start over with a new life, far from the devastation to their good name. Small price to pay for a child's self image, don't you think? Thank you for your attention and I'm certain you'll do the right thing for this child and this family.
Dang, knew I shoulda gone to law school!
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe it's not a good idea to make policy on the basis of what makes you feel most comfortable.
Maybe... just -maybe-, it's not a good idea to make policy based on emotional rhetoric.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Give the principal a break (Score:2, Insightful)
Guantanamo anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Money! (Score:5, Insightful)
He should, and I hope he does.
I'm about as anti-lawsuit as you can get, but the kid was in jail for 12 days because someone screwed up royally. Jail. An innocent kid. For no reason whatsoever. I hope he gets so much money from them that the school is absolutely freaking paranoid about ever accusing someone again in the future.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
I call "bullshit." I am a boring person. I don't do anything illegal. I don't even speed (55 means 55) unless not speeding means creating a hazardous situation on the road. I don't do drugs. I don't drink much and if I do I don't drive. I have paid for every single piece of music I have with not a single song downloaded illegally.
Yet I am vehemently against unfettered government monitoring and control of every aspect of my life and computer use.
But if I don't break the law then why care? Because "the law" is not static. What happens when some really stupid law (or yet another really stupid law) hits the books? How about prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and early '30s? Imagine if every time someone brewed beer, made wine or ran a still they were caught?
The point is that something you feel is completely and morally acceptable can be banned and with enough spying you could be jailed. And "the government" is just people. People who may or may not have your best interest in mind. Do you really want eyes peering into every aspect of your life?
I guess you only have to worry about it if you are a troublemaker or rule breaker. After all certainly you wouldn't do anything illegal like watch a DVD on Linux. Right?
Re:Can you say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Principal owes public apology (Score:3, Insightful)
Monday morning quarterback (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
If however you are put in jail for a crime that you did not commit based on "evidence" that was not fully investigated, and denied your right of innocent until proven guilty, it violates your constitutional rights. While sending emails could be considered harrassment if done excessively, by giving false information as to the origin of the email, or including threats. Putting someone in jail just does not compare. People in public offices can be convicted if they bread the law, but more importantly, can be removed from office if they go against public wishes. These wishes need to be known, and I think that sending an email is a good means to that end.
Re:Can you say... (Score:2, Insightful)
The Real WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
What horrible parents! You're absolutely right, every parent should have at least 100 grand in their pocket to hire attorneys or bail money to rescue their children from the "legal" system when the police make a little boo-boo.
In my wonderful state you can only sue for twice your loss income or 20 grand, whatever is greater [mo.gov]. So this kid could get a whopping 20 grand from this mess from the police. Yippy! I'm sure that'd make the police think twice.
I'm tired of the illegal justice system in the US. The one that lets the rich go free and throws the poor in jail because they can't afford lawyers and don't want to sit in jail for a year for minor offenses while their public defender argues in court for months. Better to plead guilty to something you never did and get a few weeks in jail and probation and be labeled for life than wait in jail to see what happens only to find out they still found you guilty and you're getting even more jail time.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is that presumptious? While there's alot that will be flushed out about the events, based on the information available so far, it sounds very much like the initial incident was a domestic type shooting. Thousands of them occur every year. How often is a domestic type shooting followed by a rampage like this? I'd imagine saying less than
Another AC response in this thread said "Tell that to the families of the dead. I'm sure it'll give them comfort."
I think loosing a young family member is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, I say this having lost a daughert myself.
In looking back I can see many things that could have happened differently that day that would have resulted in her death not occuring, but nothing that would have been reasonably been thought of as such at the time, only in retrospect. I spent days, going over in my head, if only this happened differently, or if that happened differently. And I came to the realization that not all bad things can be prevented. In retrospect, it's almost always possible to see a way to prevent tragedy after the fact, and it's far to easy to say if X had done Y differently, Z wouldn't have hapened, but decisions aren't as easy when the action can't easliy match up to the potential outcome, especially when the outcome is so far outsied the expected norm.
You can live each day taking reasonable precautions, knowing that not all bad things can be avoided. Or you go through life being paranoid over every little thing and end up missing life in the process.
While I'm sure that there are small things that VT could have done better, they're probably mostly irrevent. Ultimately, their's probably verry little that could have been done to prevent this reguardless of how vigilant of a response there was.
Re:Give the principal a break (Score:2, Insightful)
Right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's no Catch-22 (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an example from the article you linked: "[O]ne cannot get a job without work experience, but one cannot gain experience without a job."
Here's the current situation: One cannot prove one's innocence to the principal without giving trusted evidence, but one cannot give trusted evidence without being considered innocent by the principal.
It's parallel to th example I always think of for Catch-22: you need a permit to get into a secure building, but the only office where you can apply to receive the permit is inside the building.
Please knock it off. (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Slashdot effect" is bad enough. We can all individually look this information up, but when people start posting it with requisite "tee-hee, let THIS guy know" comments, it's an attempt to incite an electronic flashmobs and that is totally irresponsible, abusive and in the end pointless.
Re:Can you say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, really, I do hope that happens. It's going to suck for her, and she is going to have a much harder time of things, but we need to stop this "creeping fascism" in all sectors of USian life. This principal needs to be made to pay, for the same reason a student who behaves badly in school needs to be punished: to stop all the other principals from thinking that they can get away with the same thing. That's why the *one* that we do catch being so insanely STUPID in a situation with GRIEVOUS CONSEQUENCES for one of her pupils needs to be punished so very severly.
And if she receives a few hundred chiding e-mails, so be it as well. A few hundred chiding e-mails is NOTHING compared to twelve days in jail.
Re:Can you say... (Score:1, Insightful)
Flying in to Gambia on a commercial flight with a battery charger in your luggage [bbc.co.uk] is not what is conventionally considered an active combat operation. The US have stretched military law far beyond what is internationally agreed, and are using this to cover situations in which most democratic countries would consider criminal law to apply instead.
Re:Money! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please knock it off. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to say 'Don't do that, it's rude'. It's a lot harder to come up with means of civil expression that AREN'T rude. And if rudeness is the only the public has left of expressing our disgust at the actions of authorities, then I say bring on the rudeness.
Re:Can you say... (Score:1, Insightful)
I see no reason to ascribe malice to the principal, and the next morning her being unaware that the clocks in the call logging system had not yet been changed doesn't seem negligent to me.
We also have no proof that child's quoting of her is correct and in context (indeed the words don't ring true to me - does he have a criminal record?).
Good luck when you have to make decisions that affect others: you too may suffer from the reaction of the herd.
Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, well, that's what happens when you work for Wal-Mart. You get no health care insurance, and just enough money to pay for rent and food.
Selfish parents, spending that money on food.
Seriously, what world do you live in that working poor people have $1,000 set aside to pay for an attorney?
It's my belief they should sue, not for damages, but to punish the idiots who can't actually do their job.
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
What the FUCK are you idiots yammering about? Since when does a high school principal control who is in jail and who isn't? She reported a crime to the police, and they arrested the kid after looking at the evidence, apparently without noticing the phone company was giving out the wrong caller-ID time. Yes, she then expressed a stupid opinion about it, but quite a lot of victims expression stupid opinions about people they are informed are the suspects without waiting for a trial, and some even get so attached to the suspects they protest when evidence clears them.
Meanwhile, can we start moderating people or something? Because a lot of the people posting here are so ignorant of the government that they think a high school principal is in charge of the legal system.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is used most often when there is a shooting near a school and police are still chasing the person. While public schools are different from the open campuses that colleges have, there are still some things to think about.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:2, Insightful)
If someone is shot in the dorms, why would you cancel classes, thus resulting in larger than normal amounts of people in the dorms?
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Guantanamo Bay does not have a prison, it is a detention facility for enemy combatants.
No, it is a POW camp, and most of the residents were purchased at $10k/head.
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Time is the one resource that is impossible to make up, regardless of how much money he could have earned if he were free there are somethings that are priceless. If I were in jail during any of the above listed times for something I was truly innocent for I would want so much monetary compensation that it really hurt those who wrongfully accused me.
Re:Can you say... (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean the school is the ones that exonerated the boy. They found there was a mistake and they informed the proper authorities of the mistake to force the boys release. I mean really, what is the problem here besides the school collected the evidence instead of the cops? You have records matching other records that indicate someone did something at a certain time and then later they realized the times was incorrect and told the authorities a mistake was made.
What is wrong with that business as usual? It isn't like this happens every day. It isn't like they are falsifying records to punish students. It isn't as if they did anything illegal or underhanded. The principal didn't stop all the questioning from the cops. It isn't like the boy told anyone the time change happened and they were wrong. It is only that they didn't think about something that only happens twice a year and happened to occur at an entirely different time this year. But the business as usual led them to admit to their mistake when it was noticed and take steps to get the kid released.
It is unfortunate that this happened and that someone has been incarcerated wrongly. It is saddening that the parents didn't have or use resources to get him freed from detention sooner. It is a little more saddening that because he was a juvenile, he was probable held and subject to a different court proceeding then normal suspected criminals of legal age. But he isn't limited to suing for $20,000 either. He has the wrongful imprisonment, possibly a suit against the police and cop for failing to provide him equal protection under the law when the cops didn't verify the evidence and took the schools words for it, A separate suit against the principle and the school for their error in gathering the evidence and the direct harm done to the boy and maybe everyone else from the principle to the operator who took the call and recorded the time of it, the school for using broken equipment that led to the difference in times after the DST switch. And probably anyone who made the decision not to change the equipment out or certified that it wouldn't negatively effect anything.
Of course all those suits would probably be wrapped into one case against each instance, and for each instance they would ask for certain amounts of money. The courts/state would be limited but the police and schools might not be. And if they ask for an amount not to large yet not too small, the insurance would likely pay out instead of going to court.
Re:Can you say... (Score:1, Insightful)
That is where the 'Innocent until proven otherwise' thing comes from.
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember a court case a few years ago where a housewife was testifying against a homeless couple for having public sex. The house wife was tried of it and didn't want it done in her area. It didn't even seem to register with the woman that everything the homeless couple did was public. Who was selfish, the homeless couple for indulging in a human condition or the housewife that didn't want the act to soil her neighborhood?
Apparently you believe that the poor shouldn't have sex. Maybe you are more open minded about sex morals, believing that they can achieve enlightenment through non-baby producing means...say homosexuality...but...I doubt it. I'm willing to bet you are conservative and have a low sex drive.
At the homeless level of poverty taking reliable birth control is a bit unpractical and a bit unreasonable to take away the one human joy we come equipped with...
Also parents are not selfish for indulging in a god given need. That is nature. Selfishness is a cultural issue and in reality it is our western society that is selfish for punishing children for a parent's poverty.
Re:Can you say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
he's not a US citizen, so he doesn't get the same protections and access to a legal trial that a citizen of the US does. It sucks, but nothing about war is ever great.
Actually that is not true. Not only does the 14th Amendment [cornell.edu] to the U.S. Constitution, which also defines what a citizen is protect all persons within the States
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
but there are several treaties which we have signed which would likewise require due process. This notion that non-citizens do not have rights has been perpetuated as fact in order to justify the mistreatment of non-citizens. In any case, some of the people who are in GITMO are citizens of the United States, and many other have been citizens of countries with which we are not at war, including the UK.
This country was founded on the principal that all men are created equal and thus have equal rights under the law. Until recently we were in a business of perpetuating that idea. Now some people are trying to change our mission and justify activities that most people would normally consider un-American with bogus legal arguments that anyone with a 7th grade education should not be making, much less the Attorney General of the United States.
This guy has actually proposed completely reinterpreting the Constitution such that anything not specifically spelled out in the Constitution is not a protected right. Not only is that backwards, he has even made that argument about things that are spelled out in the Constitution. How a lawyer gets anywhere by saying "this is the law because I say so" as a legal argument is beyond me, but this is what we have now.
Anyway, I know you have a bunch of White House officials suggesting and talk show hosts outright saying that you can do whatever you want with non-citizens because they don't have rights. I know that this message is being trumpeted loud and clear on every channel, especially some particular ones. But it is not true, has never been true, and people only believe it because it is a lie that has been repeated enough.
There are a whole lot of false messages in the media which tend to have common threads. You're supposed to think for yourself and maybe wonder "why are they telling me this, particularly this way?" Like all the time spent covering the story that Obama was substituted for Osama in a CNN news story. Or the endless repeating of the word "madrassa" without a single mainstream journalist (John Stewart was the only person on a major television series who brought it up) pointing out that this is the word for school in Arabic. Followed by tape of people saying they thught Obama was a terrorist. When you see a news story you need to realize there is always an idea for sale here. And sometimes you have to learn not to buy it.
Re:Can you say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:1, Insightful)
If you are a woman and divorced the police will not stop your ex-husband from beating and raping you because they consider it a domestic issue no matter how many times you call them for help.
I know someone in Shanghai that was confined to her ex's home for many days, beaten, raped, held out of a window on the 28th floor of a highrise, her daughter dangled out the window and threatened to be dropped out and nobody would do a thing when she cried out for help.
It took a lot a bribing to get anyone in athority to lift a finger.
In a police state you have no one to hold the police accountable.
I think we have it lucky here in the US compared to what it could be.
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me some notable people grew up well below the presumably expected level of affluence necessary for being "cared for" properly (Abe Lincoln's three-walled cabin?). Calling their parents selfish imposes on them a whole system of values and thought foreign to the overwhelming majority of people on earth both now and throughout history.
Re:Can you say... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Colonial Rebellion was a bad mistake (Score:2, Insightful)
> The one that lets the rich go free and throws the poor in jail
Please correct that to:
> throws the middle class in jail
The 'poor' of today, who get free legal assistance, free health care and free university education, can afford to jaunt about in SUVs whilst blabbering into a cell phone. The middle class have to pay the taxes to support this; whilst paying out-of-pocket for university and marginal health insurance, and struggling to make ends meet. No wonder the middle class vote Republican so often... the Dems with their endless social programs ensure this.
I sincerely doubt that this kid was 'poor'. There would be an army of lawyers who couldn't wait to get their names in the newspapers, if it were so.
(But the Dems are rich too. Living in a gated community, one may actually think that the 'poor' need more help, at the expense of the middle class of course.)