Dan Rather Stands by His Story

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/27/dan_rather_suit/

This is a great article that recounts the events of "Rather-gate," Dan Rather's report on the unexplained gaps in Bush's National Guard Duty during the Vietnam War and the blow-back CBS/Viacom received from the administration.

According to this account, the documents showing Bush never showed up for duty were authentic to any reasonable journalistic standard and corroborated all the other evidence gathered in the investigation. However, CBS, still sore from the bruises and "liberal media" labels received by the Administration after being the first to run the Abu Ghraib scandal, and Viacom, hoping for a Bush victory and continued FCC deregulation, were not pleased about another controversial story so close to the election.

CBS/Viacom assembled a panel to ostensibly investigate the validity of the report, but instead they rail-roaded Rather and the producers. The panel concluded that the truth of the story was inconclusive and allegedly ignored its own evidence in support of the story.

Rather, Mapes and 3 other producers were fired.

Rather has now filed a lawsuit against CBS and refuses to settle. He intends to use subpeona power to investigate his improper firing and, in the process, demonstrate that CBS knew the story was true.

Pretty amazing stuff. As much as "liberal media" gets thrown around, all the major outlets are still run by corporations, regardless of who is in the news room. I never considered the fact that FCC deregulation could be a big carrot being held out in front of all of the networks.

If it's true, it kinda sucks for you and me. Just one more way for dishonorable people to retain power once they have it, and one more muzzle on the people whose responsibility it is to let us know how dishonorable the powerful are.

Thanks a lot guys...

...why didn't any of you tell me I didn't have time to blog every day? Sheesh. I'm blaming you, Rajlich.

Tender Vitters

Here I go. Three days into blogging, and I'm already cutting corners... Does this mean someone from the comments section wins a bet?

According to the Times-Picayune, Louisiana Senator David Vitter has earmarked $100,000 in federal funds for the group Louisiana Family Forum to develop "improvements" to the state education curriculum that will promote faith-based alternatives to evolution.

"…when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
- Isaac Asimov (Thanks to BABlog)

When may one tase a 'Bro'?

This week the tasing of a University of Florida student at a speech by John Kerry was a big story. (You can view the incident here and here.) While looking for these I found several other examples of taser use. This video shows the tasing of a UCLA student in a campus computer cluster last November. This video shows a handcuffed woman being tasered while in the holding area of local police force in Ohio.

I don't know about you, but I found these hard to watch. Sure, the UF student was a bit of a snot and had been warned; the UCLA student refused to stand up and also had been warned; and the Ohio woman was uncooperative, but are these sufficient reasons to shock the hell out of someone?

Without question, police should be allowed to use a taser in some situations. Whenever the use of deadly force is justified and a taser would be just as successful as a gun to secure the safety of the officer and the public, the police should be given the option of a taser. Having a taser in this circumstance is pareto superior to not having a taser. That is, nobody is worse off. The tasee avoids getting shot (and likely killed) for something that, in retrospect (if he is alive enough to be reflective), he probably wouldn't decide to do again, given the outcome. Likewise, the police are at minimum, no worse off, but in all likelihood, if there is a psychological cost to killing someone or participating in an accidental shooting, the police actually benefit significantly from having a taser available. Of course, when deadly force is justified and a taser isn't adequate to protect the officer or the public, then fire away.

The hard cases come when deadly force is not justified. At UF, the student was unarmed and being held down by 6 police officers. It's hard to imagine what he would have to do to get (deservingly) shot in such a situation.

There is a lot of guidance available in a Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) report commissioned by UCLA after their own student tasing (video above). The report includes a Comparative Summary of Taser Policies from other UC campus police forces, municipal police departments, and model police policies.

The report concludes that "the UCLAPD policy stands alone in its legitimization of the Taser as a pain compliance device against passive resistors," and recommends that this be corrected. Among other jurisdictions, taser use is generally limited to violent or actively aggressive suspects. In addition, UCLAPD had the most permissive policy toward tasing handcuffed subjects. This scenario is uncontemplated by many other policies and explicitly prohibited by the vast majority of the rest.

But why not tase passive resistors? Well, because passive resistors are an inconvenience rather than a danger. I know cops have a hard and dangerous job. I'm all for anything that will make the police safer. Tasers, in some situations, can serve such a function. Any time a dangerous subject is dangerous, but not dangerous enough to kill, we make cops a little safer whenever we give them a tool to use like a nightstick or taser.

However, when we allow police to use a nightstick or taser on someone who is not dangerous, only to achieve compliance, like the three cases I linked to above, we're only making a cop's job easier at the expense of pain and risk of death to the subject. Given the cost, I'm OK with cops being inconvenienced.

Also, lets not forget that using more force than you need to can actually be dangerous to the police themselves. The cops in Ohio didn't have much to worry about because they were in their own holding area. The cops at UF had a little more to be worried about. You can hear the students respond negatively once the tasing begins. At UCLA, the students were well behaved, but curious, through the first two tasings. However, during tasings three and four it takes more cops to control the crowd than it would to carry the student out in the first place.

Of course, if you had to pick a crowd based on harmlessness and compliance with authority, a bunch of college kids is about the best you could do. Could you imagine if the UCLA or UF police had done what they did among a bunch of soccer hooligans??

Nevermind, you don't have to imagine. This ends badly.

So, unless someone is an actual danger, lets keep the tasers in their holsters.


BONUS: A quick shout-out to intellectual property. While Taser is the brand name of the products made by Taser International, it has also become a generic term for the species of product itself. Consequently, there is no trademark protection for its use. Taser could have used a good IP attorney to protect their good name. They should give me a call in a year or two. :)

Inaugural Address

Today I begin blogging.

Unlike most folks, I'm not necessarily blogging to express myself here - I'm blogging for exercise.

Allow me to explain: I'm in the beginning of my second year of law school, and one thing I've noticed about the life of a law student is there is a hell of a lot more reading to do than writing. Yet when we are finally called upon to put fingers to keys (final exams, occasional major writing projects) each course grade depends entirely on our ability to clearly, comprehensively, and convincingly express ourselves as quickly as humanly possible. Not to mention that a practicing lawyer's life is spent expressing himself in memos and letters to clients, partners, and even boring old files.

So, noticing that I was getting rusty, and recognizing that all the time I spend with my nose in a book and thinking deeply about the material is for naught if I can't get it on the page efficiently, I thought: "Why not start a blog!?"

One consequence of my "exercise" mission is that I don't have any particular subject I plan to blog about. Instead, I have only two requirements: (1) each post needs to be in the form of an argument, and (2) I need to post every day.

So here we... er... I am. I'm sure you're not here yet. But if you do decide to join me, you should know a few things. First, Requirement 1 supra is going to make it difficult to talk much about myself, which is perfectly fine with me and probably you too (whoever you are). But if you had your heart set on reading about my cat, then you're out of luck (1) because there aren't a lot of arguments to be made about my cat (see Requirement 1), and (2) because, despite the name of the blog, I don't own a cat. (For cat stuff, go here. Marty has two of them. Sorry Marty.)

That brings us to Requirement 2. Because I will be posting every day, there will be plenty of opportunities for me to tell you exactly what "The Martian Cat Problem" means, though I might have to look into it myself first. In the meantime, you can expect a healthy dose of science, philosophy, political ranting, religious discourse, and yes law-stuff.

So, welcome! Feel free to comment if/when I say something absurd. It's bound to happen soon, and I don't mind being raked over the proverbial coals.