Lone Wolf Tickets
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A question. Has anyone yet attempted to leverage yesterday’s tragedy at Fort Hood into a defense of the Patriot Act’s “lone wolf” provision? Maybe the question is not if, but when. I’m thinking of starting a pool.
Of course it may not be necessary. Yesterday* the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to extend three provisions: roving wiretaps; section 215, or the “libraries provision” diminishing privacy rights; and the “lone wolf” provision, which should probably be renamed the “pack of wolves” provision, for its potential (arguably inevitable) future misuse against political “radicals”, as defined by whatever pack is in power.
[*correction: the House Judiciary Committee voted on Nov. 5 to allow the LW provison to expire; the Senate Judiciary voted last month to extend all three]
update: Speaking of grassroots terrorism, if the Seattle police are right, a man now in critical condition who was shot and arrested earlier today for the assassination-style killing of a Seattle police officer was waging a terrorist campaign of his own (with at least one accomplice) against the city’s police department. According to police, Christopher Monfort, an Obama-lookalike with a similar biracial background, is also a suspect in an arson case involving the torching of several police vehicles at a motor pool. The arsonist left a note promising to kill police officers. Monfort is a University of Washington graduate and sometime activist:
Monfort received a bachelor’s degree from the UW in March 2008, according to the university’s degree-validation Web site. His major was in Law, Societies and Justice.
Last year, Monfort belonged to the McNair Scholars Program, part of the university’s office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. The program aims to steep undergraduate students in sophisticated research, preparing them for graduate work.
Monfort provided this title for his project with the McNair program: “The Power of Citizenship Your Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About: How to Change the Inequity of the Criminal Justice System Immediately, Through Active Citizen Nullification of Laws, As a Juror.”
In an abstract of his project, Monfort said he planned to “illuminate and further” the scholarship of Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University. Butler is a proponent of jury nullification, a controversial principle whereby jurors feel free to disregard a judge’s instructions and acquit a defendant no matter the strength of the evidence.
Butler has argued that such nullification may be particularly appropriate in cases where black defendants are charged with nonviolent crimes.
“It is the moral responsibility of black jurors to emancipate some guilty black outlaws,” Butler wrote in a 1995 Yale Law Journal article, adding: “My goal is the subversion of American criminal justice, at least as it now exists.”
update II: Seattle police now claim to have found bomb-making materials and more evidence linking Monfort to the arson and the murder, and have declared him a “domestic terrorist.”
update III: After initially speculating Monfort had one or two accomplices, police are now saying he acted alone.
update IV: Looks like the above-mentioned Professor Butler, proponent of jury nullification, has a new book out, reviewed uncritically in the NYRB, Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.
Filed under: Law, Politics, liberties
You guys really take the cake. Using a tragedy like a police shooting to promote a political agenda. Comparing this dirtbag to Obama, really? I thought I had seen it all from you right wing scum, but I guess I hadn’t.
Forgive me. I have trouble keeping up with the growing list of prohibitions. But thanks for making me aware that noticing a striking physical resemblance to the president is forbidden. Where do I go for my self-criticism and rehabilitation session? Are they like AA meetings now? My name is Dennis, and I’m a skeptaholic.
Hi Dennis!
Zoom zoom.
Kidding aside, ZZ, I’m not proposing someone use the massacre to promote the (Obama supported) extension of the “lone wolf” provision, but suggesting that someone likely will, after an indecently short interval.
If you were familiar with the magazine and its “scum” (charming devil you!) you might (might) have picked up on that.
Dennis -
(BTW, hi from near your old stomping grounds in – where was it again – Downey? Norwalk? can’t remember – age does that to us or at least me).
Monfort’s background as a 50-50 Af-Euro is certainly at least potentially relevant to his ideology and actions. If Monfort had/has written a book
or biographical manifesto (for all I know he has: I read the linked articles but haven’t done any more reading on him) that specific relevance might be clearer; lacking such details the prior probability of relevance of his biraciality is high.
The degree to which Monfort might physically/facially resemble Obama doesn’t seem in any way relevant, based on facts presently in evidence. I don’t think you can blame ZZ for being suspicious of what certainly looks like pure baiting on your part. Perhaps you can elaborate on the connection you see?
Why is it “baiting”? Am I simply naive to not get this? I make no connection! I see no connection! And it’s Norwalk, if you must expose our Plebeian roots here amongst our betters.
Oh, and ZZ, I think you forgot to hit the CAPS LOCK button.
Now that’s baiting.
If I may be forgiven for being serious for a minute, I think the question here is whether individual criminality can be justification for taking away privacy and individual autonomy by increasing government power.
There are lunatics on both sides of the argument, as verified by those who suggested that after the Branch Davidians murdered 4 law enforcement officers, perhaps it would have been kinder to just ignore them:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/10/21/so-thats-fbi-integrity/
On the other side of the issue, the current crop of Democrats in the Presidency, the Senate, and the Congress seem determined to tear down capitalism and begin turning us over to a fledgling world government in Copenhagen next month.
Those of us who sat in classes for the “Special Ops” of the 60’s, were taught how to teach peasants to be “insurrectionists” (we didn’t call them terrorists then). Often, someone would ask the instructor to verify that we would be under orders NOT to help those peasants fight, when they came to the attention of their government, because of the success of our teachings. What happens to these people, and their families, their women and children? The answer invariably came back, “They die”.
I see individuals in the TAC Blog claim that the US is illegitimate, and that one must have sympathy for those who attack us. I don’t think the government must place all of us under surveillance. But I DO believe that it is a duty to balance the conversation, even when at times I buy into the elitists’ notions that I may be somehow inferior to themselves in some way.
Because I often see encyclopedic knowledge and intellect coupled with a distinct lack of common sense.
Government surveillance MUST be used against MOVEMENTS and PLOTS, but NOT against INDIVIDUALS. This will obviously be a perpetual political battleground. The people from the US 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, I trust. Some of you new people I don’t know very well, and I hope you are up to the task, of striking and maintaining the correct balance.
So, because of this nutjob you want to continue something as unconstitutional and reprehensible as the “Patriot Act”. Violate other peoples liberties and push your political agenda. Disgusting.
You’re right Isaac. Reading comprehension is a wholly unnecessary impediment to sanctimony.