Over the weekend, former New Mexico governor and current Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson spoke to a mostly supportive crowd at Paul-Fest. Johnson praised Rep. Ron Paul for everything he had done for the liberty movement and pointed out their many areas of agreement as he asked for Paul’s supporters to vote for the Libertarian ticket. Johnson also made reference to the “exclusionary process” that is the Republican Party’s nomination process. Ron Paul had qualified to have his name considered for nomination at the convention and an opportunity to speak at the convention but the RNC had changed its own rules,to prevent any challenge to Mitt Romney’s nomination to give the impression to those watching at home that the G.O.P was united behind Romney. Gov. Johnson was also a victim of this process as he was only allowed to participate in two of the televised debates when he was running for the G.O.P. nomination.
The Johnson campaign has already cut a new ad – “Gary Johnson – Ron Paul REVOLUTIONARY” using the same lines from the speech.
I think Gov. Johnson makes a persuasive case. If you are a Ron Paul supporter, what better way is left to give the middle finger to the establishment than to vote for Gary Johnson?
As facts dribble out, we have an increasingly complete picture of what actually occurred. Mr Johnson had a grudge against Mr Steven Ercolino – a manager at a company he had worked at in the past – and had decided to lie in wait with a hand-gun and to murder him in an ambush as Mr Ercolino walked to work. As Mr. Ercolino walked towards his office from purchasing some food at a coffee shop, Mr Johnson shot him in the head from behind, and fired two more rounds into his torso, killing him.
Mr Johnson then walked away and tried to escape by blending into the crowd of similarly attired people on their way to work. However, he was trailed by a construction worker. Mr Johnson’s escape route took him past a police detail, and the construction worker trailing him alerted the officers on that detail that Mr Johnson had just murdered someone and was armed.
Two officers hustled to catch up with Mr Johnson. They challenged him. He drew (but did not fire) his weapon, and the police fired 16 rounds in quick succession into him. Bystanders were struck by police bullets, the fragments of the bullets, and fragments of masonry turned into shrapnel by the police bullets.
We at The Liberty Papers are often critical of the government and its agents, but in this case, the police appear to have handled the matter properly. The officers were approached by a citizen and made aware of a serious felony and were pointed to a suspect.
The first choice the officers faced was the question of whether or not to confront Mr. Johnson. I believe the police did the right thing in confronting him, for several reasons:
First, when people commit murders – especially when they ambush people on their way to work – it is often part of a spree killing – where a person goes to multiple locations, killing all the people they have grudges against in one go. Had police failed to confront him, who knows what would have happened, who else he might have killed? After all, Mr Jefferson had several clips on his person – despite clearly planning to fire only a few shots into his victim.
Secondly, had they tried to tail Mr Johnson, they ran the risk of losing him in the crowd. They would have had to abandon their posts to do so.
Thirdly, what if Mr Johnson was innocent and the construction worker was mistaken? In that case tailing him would have distracted police from finding the real killer.
In confronting Mr Johnson immediately after the allegations against him were communicated to them, the police officers were doing good police work.
When Mr Johnson pulled the gun out of his bag, and attempted to point it at the men confronting him, the dynamic then changed. In effect, he was committing an act of assault on people who happen to be police officers.
In shooting him, the police were defending their lives as any citizen should be able to do in a free society. In shooting that many rounds the police were not guilty of excess – people are rarely killed or incapacitated instantly by a bullet from a handgun and the police appear to stop firing almost instantly after Mr Johnson dropped his gun and flopped down to the pavement. I judge what I see in the video to be a legitimate act of self-defence by the officers.
The person guilty of depraved indifference in this affair is Mr Johnson, who chose to ambush and murder someone on a crowded sidewalk and to initiate a gun-fight on another crowded side-walk. We will never know what Mr Johnson intended to accomplish when he set out to murder Mr. Ercolino, whether he had other people in his sights, or what made him snap. Those secrets died with him as he lay hand-cuffed, face down, on the pavement. In the end, though, the responsibility for the carnage falls squarely on his shoulders.
In all likelihood, this case will be picked over for what people could have done differently. Certainly, the accuracy of the police fire, their training, and their doctrine for confronting people like Mr Johnson should be reexamined for possible improvements. But, at this point, it appears that the police made the correct decisions to confront and then shoot Mr Johnson, despite how awfully everything turned out.
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
One of the ways the Obama campaign and Democrats in general have been deflecting attention away from the poor performance of the economy has been to change the subject to social issues. Democrats know that independent women are reluctant to support Republicans because of this perception that Republicans do not care about the concerns of women. Democrats are doing all they can to reinforce this perception asserting that Republicans have engaged in a “war on women.” Among their talking points are that Republicans are opposed to “equal pay for equal work” laws, contraception coverage mandates for health insurance, and abortion even in the cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother (I have already debunked the alleged gender pay gap here and explained why there is no “right” to free contraception here). Republicans tend to lend credence to being anti-woman when they say things like the following:
“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
That was Republican Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s response to a question concerning whether or not a woman should have the legal right to terminate a pregnancy that was a result of a rape. How might a pregnant woman who was raped conclude from this statement? Was Mr. Akin implying that she wasn’t “legitimately raped” otherwise, she wouldn’t be pregnant? Why, every woman in America who has become pregnant who thought she was raped must not have actually been raped! No, these women must have enjoyed the experience, or at the very least consented according to fertility expert Todd Akin.
One would hope that some of the Republican men, especially those who are running for office, would have moved on past the misogynistic attitudes revealed in comments like these. Unfortunately, it seems that some continue to hold on to a similar attitude as Clayton Williams who once joked about bad weather and rape “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
Beyond idiotic statements like these, anti-choice activists have been pushing so-called “personhood” laws in various states to give every fertilized egg full legal rights that all people have. Personhood goes beyond the abortion issue and has some very bad unintended consequences. The Dominican Republic has such laws already on the books; just a few days ago, a teenager died most likely because doctors were afraid of running afoul of the law.
(CNN) — A pregnant leukemia patient who became a flashpoint in the abortion debate in the Dominican Republic died Friday morning, a hospital official told CNN.
The 16-year-old, who had been undergoing chemotherapy, died from complications of the disease, said Dr. Antonio Cabrera, the legal representative for the hospital.
Her case stirred debate in her country, as her life was potentially at risk because of anti-abortion laws in the Dominican Republic.
Doctors were hesitant to give her chemotherapy because such treatment could terminate the pregnancy — a violation of the Dominican Constitution, which bans abortion. Some 20 days after she was admitted to the hospital, she finally began receiving treatment.
The patient, whose identity has not been released because she’s a minor and because of the hospital’s privacy policy, was 13 weeks pregnant.
Oh, well that’s the Dominican Republic. That would never happen here in the U.S., right? Don’t be so sure. Back in April, the Tennessee House passed a bill that would make every woman who has a miscarriage a murder suspect. The Georgia legislature considered a similar bill that would have required women to prove that their miscarriages “occurred naturally.” Having a miscarriage, a very common occurrence, is traumatic enough without being interrogated by some asshole detective downtown!
While some of these “war on women” attacks on Republicans are unfair in my judgment, Republicans don’t do themselves any favors by some of their more extreme anti-choice proposals and comments. Good people can disagree about abortion but those who are opposed to abortion need to do a better job of making their case without making women second-class citizens with fewer rights than “the unborn” whenever they happen to be pregnant.
***UPDATE***
The Republicans have added a “human life” plank to the draft of their party platform.
Tampa, Florida (CNN) – The Republican Party is once again set to enshrine into its official platform support for “a human life amendment” to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday.
“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft platform declares. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
Sigh.
My Republican friends: if you lose to Obama in November, don’t blame Libertarians. If you focus on these divisive social issues instead of the economy (and it IS the economy, stupid) you will lose and you will only have yourselves to blame.
If you haven’t been over to The Agitator recently to read what Radley Balko’s guest bloggers have been writing in his absence over the last several weeks, you are missing some grade A quality posts. This post from William Anderson “Costs and Benefits of Modern ‘Sex Crime’ Witch Hunts” is the creme de la creme.
In this post, Anderson details how easily innocent people can be charged, tried, and convicted of sex crimes due to federal laws such as the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act of 1974 (A.K.A. the Mondale Act) and rape shield laws which disadvantage the accused by lowering the normal criminal standard of proof guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to a preponderance of evidence. Not only does the accused have to try to prove a negative (ex: that s/he did not sexually assault the accuser) but also pay out of pocket for legal defense that can cost in the millions of dollars to do so (meanwhile, the state can easily bear the costs of prosecuting the case with taxpayer money).
People who are accused [of sex crimes] either must depend upon a public defender or must pay for legal representation from their own resources, and it does not take long for the money spigot to run dry. Tonya Craft literally had close to a million dollars to spend on her defense, and she still ran out of funds before the case even came to trial. In the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case, each of the three defendants had to spend more than $1 million apiece just to try to debunk what were transparently-false charges.
[…]
The costs can be substantial. I know one attorney who specializes in such cases who requires a down payment up front of $100,000. Since few people keep $100K in spare change, getting the funds is very, very difficult. Then there a experts in forensics, interviewing, and the like who also do not testify for free. One of the reasons that so many people plead to something in such cases is that they do not have the personal resources to fight the charges.
Surely, this could not have been the criminal justice system the founders of this country envisioned!
Okay, so the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek to get your attention… But there is a serious issue to discuss here based on a campaign stop in Iowa:
A surprising anecdote from a White House pool report this morning:
Campaign official also offers up that potus was talking about white house beer, which apparently the white house brews, she said, and one cafe patron requested a bottle, so potus sent out to Ground Force One and gave him one.
Now, I’ve known for a while that Obama is a “homebrewer” (i.e. not sure if he or someone on his staff actually brews the beer). I do think it’s pretty cool that he’s supportive of the hobby.
Statute
§ 123.144 BOTTLING BEER.
No person shall bottle beer within the state of Iowa for purposes other than for individual consumption in a private home, except class “A” permittees who have complete equipment for bottling beer and who have received the approval of the local board of health as to sanitation, and it shall be the duty of local boards of health to inspect the premises and equipment of class “A” permittees who desire to bottle beer.
…
Applicable Statutory Material
§ 123.2. General prohibition
It is unlawful to manufacture for sale, sell, offer or keep for sale, possess, or transport alcoholic liquor, wine, or beer except upon the terms, conditions, limitations, and restrictions enumerated in this chapter.
I’m pretty sure that Obama, or whoever on his staff is brewing, is not a class “A” permittee in the state of Iowa. So while homebrewing is legal in Iowa, I don’t think giving a beer to a diner in a public restaurant would be legal. And I’d also think it’s pretty safe to assume that based on these statutes, “transporting alcoholic beer” on your campaign bus would be illegal, as I’m guessing that Obama’s people didn’t comply with all the different terms, conditions, limitations, and restrictions in Iowa law.
Now, I’m not a dick. I don’t want to see Obama cited for violating the law. Hell, if I was sitting in that diner, and asked him about it, I would have thought it pretty damn cool. Hell, I’d jump at the chance for him to try mine. All politics aside, I can bond with just about anyone over beer.
But I do want to point out that we don’t [or shouldn’t] have a different set of laws that apply to our elected officials than apply to the rest of us. We shouldn’t have a government that tells us that we can’t brew up a case of homebrew and drive it over to a different location to offer it free of charge to someone that might be interested in drinking it.
These are liberties that should be allowed not just for the President of the United States, but for all of us.