The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency.
All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity.
But when you have resolved to be great,
abide by yourself,
and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world.
The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Supreme Court Allows Discretionary Strip Searches
--For Any Offense
Florence v. Board of Freeholders: 5-4 Decision:
THUMBS DOWN!
Albert Florence had made late payment on a traffic fine, the proof of which he kept in his car, but through some bureaucratic foul-up, there was still a bench warrant out for him. A New Jersey state trooper, without explanation, arrested him and brought him to jail, where he underwent thorough strip searches before being put in the general population. Florence subsequently sued, based on the fact that New Jersey exempts suspects accused of minor crimes from strip searches. He won the first round but the defendant appealed, arguing that the need to control contraband (hidden in body cavities and the like) outweighed Florence's 4th Amendment rights: it was just easy to administer the same search procedures for all suspects, regardless of criminal status. The Court of Appeals agreed, overturning Florence. SCOTUS agreed to take up the case. The conservative justices,with swing justice Kennedy, agreed that jailers should be given discretion to implement strip searches across suspects.
This is one of those cases which pits my libertarian side (limited government) against my conservative side (law and order). Oddly enough, I haven't seen to date a relevant comment from Reason, Cato Institute or even Ron Paul (this may be an artifact of my Internet searches). It's bad enough Florence got arrested in the first place (I believe he says in the clip that the trooper refused to discuss the reason for the arrest (apparently a suspect doesn't have the right to know): if he had, the whole false arrest could have been averted given Florence's proof of payment). The presumption (that all potential suspects go around carrying things in their body cavities just in case this is their lucky day and they're going to be arrested) borders on the insane. This comment I found on an LA Times website makes the same point: [To Justice Kennedy's point: "Experience shows that people arrested for minor offense have tried to smuggle prohibited items into jail," Kennedy said. And officials cannot take such a risk"] "Oh really? You mean these evil folks KNOW ahead of time that they are going to be arrested for minor offenses, and will therefore preemptively hide prohibited items in their orifices just in case?" Let's flesh it out even more: "If I'm going to be arrested anyway, and I know suspects can be subjected to strip searches, I might as well see if I can get away with it..."
This is very much like the TSA situation. Blanket strip searches are a typical Big Government Procrustean solution: "we don't need the hassle of explaining why we strip searched X vs. Y: it's easier just to strip search everyone." I haven't done any empirical analyses on how many strip searches ever come up with anything positive, and I suspect some people are more likely to smuggle things than others (e.g., members of a gang or relatives, recidivists, etc.)
We see very odd political inconsistencies: for example, the conservative jurists here seem to be fine with statists exercising arbitrary strip searches, but progressive justices are not. On the other hand, we have a progressive administration carrying on intrusive TSA searches.
I think one of the sad things in doing background research for this commentary is the callous nature of many "law and order" conservatives being utterly dismissive of the Bill of Rights and the presumption of innocence. ("There but for the grace of God...") What if there's a case of mistaken identity? What if someone makes a false charge?
Somewhere along the line SCOTUS seems to have lost track of what constitutes a reasonable search. A blanket search is by its very definition unreasonable.
Barack "Wildcatter" Obama, Part 2
I don't normally cite natural resource investment blogs (this is not a personal finance blog, and all readers should do their own due diligence before making investment decisions). But Christian DeHaemer's essay Obama's "Smart Diplomacy" Makes Things Easy for Harper (Canada) has some eye-popping takeaways:
- "With as much as 1.7 trillion barrels of oil now within recoverable reach from their massive oil sands mega-formations, this nation has in its grasp more than six times the oil of Saudi Arabia's reserves."
- "The unemployment rate has fallen to four-year lows. And the Canadian dollar has gained 21% against the U.S. dollar since 2009. Federal debt to GDP ratio is the lowest in the G7 — and forecast to fall to 28.5% by 2017. Canada's corporate tax rate is 15% compared to 35% in the U.S. of A."
Now we conservatives have been targeting Obama's blatantly political move delaying action on the Keystone pipeline project, linking tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries. In a recent post, I also talked about the glut of domestic oil in Cushing, OK, which you can think of as a domestic hub for limited-capacity pipelines to the Gulf refineries. This has depressed West Texas oil prices relative to Brent (international standard). In essence, our top oil trading partner is giving us a major discount, which the POTUS seems to be less than enthusiastic about:
- "Some have estimated the Canadian oil discount to the U.S. is $4.6 billion a year due to the lower price of West Texas Crude versus the global price of Brent....Canada can sell their oil to the Chinese at a higher price."
Canadian Prime Minister Harper has this to say:
And the truth of the matter is that, when it comes to oil in particular, we do face a significant discount on the marketplace because of the fact that we're a captive supplier. We have made it clear to the people of Canada one of our national priorities is to make sure that we have the infrastructure and the capacity to export our energy products outside of North America.How long are we going to spend blood and money in the volatile Middle East ensuring safe passage of Gulf region oil while passive-aggressive Obama continues to play bureaucratic games, putting environmental impact speed bumps in the way of new development projects, taking acreage off the table, restricting new projects off blue state coasts, dragging out permit approvals, etc.?
Crude Oil Imports: Top 15 Countries
(Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country YTD 2011 YTD 2010
CANADA 2,157 1,971
SAUDI ARABIA 1,180 1,072
MEXICO 1,113 1,132
VENEZUELA 893 928
NIGERIA 826 1,018
COLOMBIA 364 328
IRAQ 473 464
ECUADOR 203 215
ANGOLA 323 413
RUSSIA 246 295
BRAZIL 225 270
KUWAIT 164 204
ALGERIA 204 337
CHAD 54 14
OMAN 39 0
Political Humor
"Recently at the White House, President Obama admitted he's a Trekkie. Although Trekkies say he doesn't qualify because he has a wife and a job." - Conan O'Brien
[Wait a second, Conan. Don't you remember Ken Walsh's (US News & World Report) expose on Obama (below) where Obama specifically talks about not making decisions on emotion, and some Dems comparing Obama to Mr. Spock? And then there was that 2008 San Francisco appearance where Obama talked about Midwesterners clinging to their phasers and Prime Directive... Now, obviously, Obama's big circular ears aren't the pointy kind we see on your conventional Vulcan like Mr. Spock; that's because Obama's father comes from the minority round-eared Kenya region on Vulcan. Obama Sr. journeyed across the galaxy to find an earth maiden....Donald Trump insists that there is no immigration treaty between the US and the rest of the Federation, and hence all Vulcan immigrants are illegal aliens. He suspects that Obama was born on the starship but then teleported into an Hawaiian hospital nursery.
]
]
"Congratulations to Mitt Romney. He won the Wisconsin primary. He won the state of Wisconsin because of his pro-cheese position." - David Letterman
[Obama countered by promising Wisconsin voters, if reelected, free government cheese, a ban on the sale of 1% milk, and a tariff on all cheese imported from the People's Republic of California.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Doobie Brothers, "Another Park, Another Sunday"
