Miscellany: 4/28/13

Quote of the Day
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Ambrose Bierce

Earlier One-Off Post: Bill O' Reilly and the Boston Terrorism Situation

Education Choice, Disadvantaged Kids, and College Acceptance



Rand Paul Does a Good Job Summarizing the Case for Liberty Politics



FDR's Executive Order 9066:
An Abuse of Power That Will Live in Infamy
Korematsu v. United States: An Abomination

Courtesy of Constitutional Law Prof Blog

George Will this past week wrote one of his characteristically brilliant essays about one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in history.  Fred Korematsu, an American of Japanese descent, did not comply with local authorities enforcing the WWII internment order and was convicted of a federal crime. He appealed on constitutional grounds; the government insisted that the order was not racially motivated, that Japanese Americans on the West Coast were signaling to Japanese ships. The Court ruled 6-3 that there were extenuating circumstances in upholding the conviction. The Court's only remaining GOP nominee, Justice Jackson, wrote this dissent:

 Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law abiding and well disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived. [...] [H]is crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought, different than they, but only in that he was born of different racial stock. Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable. Even if all of one's antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him. But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign. If Congress in peace-time legislation should enact such a criminal law, I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it.

Let me continue from a post on a Jackson website:

Korematsu’s case stood for almost 40 years until Professor Peter Irons with the help of Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, researching government’s archives, stumbled upon secret Justice Department documents. Among them were memos written in 1943 and 1944 by Edward Ennis, the Justice Department attorney responsible for supervising the drafting of the government’s brief. As Ennis began searching for evidence to support the Army’s claim that the Internment was necessary and justified, he found precisely the opposite -- that J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, the FCC, the Office of Naval Intelligence and other authoritative intelligence agencies categorically denied that Japanese Americans had committed any wrong. Other memoranda characterized the government’s claims that Japanese Americans were spying as “intentional falsehoods.” These official reports were never presented to the Supreme Court, having been intentionally suppressed and, in one case, destroyed by setting the report afire. It was on this basis -- governmental misconduct -- that a legal team of pro bono attorneys successfully reopened Korematsu’s case in 1983, resulting in the erasure of his criminal conviction for defying the Internment.

I acknowledge there was a  Congressional apology with a $20K payment per survivor (77,000 American citizens and 43,000 legal and illegal resident aliens were affected by the order) approved by the Senate and signed into law by Reagan, and Korematsu was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Clinton in 1998. But there's unfinished business: Professor Irons wants SCOTUS to repudiate its original decision. (Thumbs UP!)

What motivated George Will to give us a history lesson? The argument of certain populist conservatives and others wanting to treat the surviving Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized citizen, as an enemy combatant, i.e., deprived of constitutional rights.



Rocky Mountain High 
Taxes Colorado....

Clap for the Taxman...He Gonna Take State Spending High

Various proposals aim to tax recreational marijuana sales up to 30%.... My former UH students kidded (I think) they rated my exams by how many beers it took to forget them. Taxpayers may soon rate their state legislators by how many joints it takes to forget how much they're paying in taxes...

My personal opinion--a mind is a terrible thing to get wasted.



Is This America? Footage From the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Search

Some reports alleged if you weren't home, the police would break in (no warrant), and if you were home, you did not have the option to refuse their searching your house or apartment. I have seen footage of groups of up to or more than a dozen law enforcement officers in a group--in a sweep for just one man. Some people were no doubt more terrified confronted by groups of armed lawmen than a college student on the run.





Political Humor



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "Blinded By the Light"