Purge the Congressional Page Program

When the Mark Foley scandal broke last Friday, I had two initial reactions.

First, I assumed that it had to be a political hit operation, and that may wind up being the case. Outing "openly closeted" Republicans is a rather vicious bloodsport, but given the fact that many of them oppose marriage equality to the extent that they want to amend the Constitution I consider it fair game. Rep. David Dreier, who may have a domestic partnership-style relationship with his Chief of Staff, falls into this category.

Second, I had to ask why there was even a page program in the first place. Beyond the expense, surely it is not healthy to place high school juniors and seniors in the lion's den of the Capitol cloakroom. It is the equivalent of placing chickens in between packs of wolves.

John Tierney in The New York Times notes that the Congressional page program helps those youths privileged enough to serve as pages realize that "Congress is the closest thing in modern America to a medieval court: an enclave governed by arcane ancient rules of seniority, a gathering of nobles who spend their days accepting praise and dispensing favors to supplicants."

In addition to being spared from the sexual pecadilloes of elected officials, Mr. Tierney argues that they need to be spared from "the chief lesson taught by the program: that success is all about making the right connections."

His full column may be found here (premium content).

Whatever the final disposition of Foleygate, it's high time to ABOLISH THE CONGRESSIONAL PAGE PROGRAM. Kudos to Rep. Ray LaHood for taking the lead on the issue.

This Blog is Officially "Back on Track"

Not that many people beyond my immediate circle read the prior incarnation of NikosNotes (with that drab pea-soup coloring with hints of orange), but I will make a concerted attempt to post here on topics that interest me at the moment.

Also, I hope to really make this blog a bit more personal and less didactic, but often the distinction is blurred even in life outside the blogosphere.

So please bear with me, gentle readers!

ON HAITUS FOR NOW

I wonder if anyone notices that I've been away. The thing is, I've never really left!

Juggling two blogs is hard enough... Juggling three is simply unmanageable, and detrimental to my mental well-being. I am sad to say that this blog is shutting its doors until further notice.

But I am still very much online at:

Drug Policy Alliance's blog, The D'Alliance (on drug-related issues)

and

To the People, a group libertarian blog (circle jerk?) where I will basically rant and rave about everything else.

So this really isn't goodbye, per se.

Defending Janice Rogers Brown

The New York Times reports today that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will attempt to break the Senate Democrats' judicial filibuster of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Stuart Taylor of the National Journal points out the obvious in his latest column : it's all about politics. He does a rather good job of assessing the pitfalls of going to the mat on both sides of the aisle, invoking the hallmark virtue of the United States Senate -- compromise.

Earlier this month, I responded to a highly negative piece authored by Mr. Taylor, arguing that Justice Brown may be too radical of an appointment for the President. At issue: Lochner and the use of substantive due process in equal protection cases. Once again, it appears that recognition of property rights is viewed as a juridical liabilty -- an orientation that is so skewed that it demonstrates the excruciatingly jaundiced nature of the current practice of American law.

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Dear Sir --

After I read your article on Justice Brown, I felt compelled to point out that Justice Brown's purportedly apocryphal visions of the post-Lochner era in constitutional law were incompletely addressed. Brown's opinions should take precedence over extraneous speeches to law students and libertarian public interest litigators. Regarding Lochner, her dissent in Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court, 19 Cal. 4th 952 (1999) deserved far more than a passing mention. Pay particular attention to footnote 2:

Lochner (Lochner v. New York (1905) 198 U.S. 45) is the name that has come to symbolize judicial usurpation of power. But the problem with Lochner was not that it sought to make judicial review meaningful or that it deemed economic interests worthy of protection. The Lochner court was justly criticized for using the due process clause "as though it provided a blank check to alter the meaning of the Constitution as written." (Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections (1966) 383 U.S. 663, 675.). The "revolution of 1937" ended the era of economic substantive due process but it did not dampen the court's penchant for rewriting the Constitution. Although the court left the protection of property interests largely to the mercy of legislatures, it continued to apply substantive due process to the protection of civil liberties. "As several of the Justices have noted in dissent, there is only a verbal difference between the 'fundamental rights' branch of the compelling governmental interest test and the now discredited substantive due process doctrine of such cases as Lochner. . . . Both of them leave the Court entirely at large, with full freedom to enact its own natural law conceptions. The only difference is in the type of interests that are protected . . . ." (Lusky, By What Right? (1975) p. 266, fns. omitted.)

In that dissent, Justice Brown also looked at the unfortunate dichotomy between interests that are routinely judicially cognizable ("liberty") and those that are less so ("property"):

Indeed, the ownership of property is itself an aspect of liberty. "Property does not have rights. People have rights. The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less than the right to speak or the right to travel, is in truth a 'personal' right . . . . [A] fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right [to] property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized. J. Locke, Of Civil Government 82-85 (1924) . . . ." (Lynch v. Household Finance Corp. (1972) 405 U.S. 538, 552.)

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Lochner and its progeny, the federal high court articulated such a hierarchy, relegating economic rights to a decidedly inferior status. This has resulted in a judicial review not merely deferential but actually nonexistent. The rational basis test--a standard of review which allows legislative action to stand if the court can hypothesize any perfunctory justification for it--is as bad in its own way as substantive due process. Neither approach finds support in the constitutional text.

If the "radical libertarian brand of judicial activism" alluded to in your column means affording property interests some degree of protection from untrammeled legislative plunder, then I fail to see the great danger posed by it. The current Court's so-called New Judicial Federalism -- branded as "radical" by critics -- is a modest constraint upon the supra-constitutional exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. If anything, a little principled radicalism is called for in our appellate courts, where there is an institutional gravity toward comity for its own sake.

One of the prevailing themes in Justice Brown's jurisprudence is her advocacy of "means-end scrutiny" that tries to find a workable third way between rational basis and strict scrutiny in equal protection cases. This was first forwarded in by Professor Gerald Gunther over thirty years ago (see Gerald Gunther, Foreword: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection (1972) 86 Harv. L.Rev. 1), and used by the majority in the Nollan and Dolan property rights cases.

In the future, I invite you look the following cases where her adoption of "means scrutiny" or "rational basis with bite" was utilized contexts other than property: Kasler v. Lockyer, 23 Cal. 4th 472 (2000) (her majority opinion upheld Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act on rational basis equal protection review (in part), her concurring opinion critical of current equal protection jurisprudence); Warden v. State Bar of California, 21 Cal. 4th 628 (1999) (dissent re. California’s Mandatory Continuing Legal Education program that exempted some active bar members from participation, calling for more reliance on state constitutional requirements pertaining to privileges and immunities and uniform operation of law).

Three other cases that come to mind when assessing Justice Brown's work product:

(1) People v. Robertson, 34 Cal. 4th 156 (2004) -- dissenting opinion where she called for the abandonment of the common law second-degree felony-murder rule in California.

(2) People v. Floyd, 31 Cal. 4th 179 (2003) -- dissenting opinion calling for the rule of lenity for a nonviolent drug possession defendant under the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000.

(3) Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car Sys., 21 Cal. 4th 121 (1999) -- dissenting opinion where she criticized her colleagues for carving out a "Fair Employment and Housing Act exception to the First Amendment," featuring the following observation: "One of the truths we hold to be self-evident is that a government that tells its citizens what they may say will soon be dictating what they may think. But in a country that puts such a high premium on freedom, we cannot allow ourselves to be the captives of orthodox, culturally imposed thinking patterns. Indeed, I can conceive no imprisonment so complete, no subjugation so absolute, no debasement so abject as the enslavement of the mind."

Finally, as to the overarching question as the proper role of judges in assessing legislative enactments that touch "hard" questions, the following excerpt from Justice Brown's dissent in American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, 16 Cal. 4th 307 (1997) is entirely on point:

Courts must speak with clarity and precision when the available tools are adequate to the task at hand, but when the claim at issue involves fundamentally moral and philosophical questions as to which there is no clear answer, courts must remain tentative, recognizing the primacy of legislative prerogatives. The temptation always exists for judges to "wrap up their veto" of a legislative policy in a "protective veil of adjectives such as . . . 'reasonable,' 'inherent,' [or] 'fundamental,' . . . whose office usually, though quite innocently, is to disguise what they are doing and impute to it a derivation far more impressive than their personal preferences, which are all that in fact lie behind the decision." (Hand, The Bill of Rights (Harv.U. Press 1958) p. 70.) Whether judges act innocently or deliberately, the harm to the body politic is the same. The very real danger we face when "courts foreclose ordinary politics in one area after another" is that the "democratic elements in our republican experiment will wither away, while new forms of tyranny by the powerful few arise." (Scalia, Comment by Glendon in A Matter of Interpretation (Princeton U. Press 1997) p. 113.) "WHOM SHOULD WE FEAR MORE: an aroused populace, or the vanguard who know better than the people what the people should want?" (Ibid.)

The danger is most acute when the language to be interpreted is amorphous, vague, or general enough to provide broad scope for judicial policymaking and the court insists on creating its own standard, untethered to either the language, as used by its authors or, in the case of a constitution, the apparent intent of those who ratified it. The word "privacy" as used in the California Constitution, for example, has a meaning which can easily be derived from its history, context, and text. The controlling opinion reads this history backwards to infuse "privacy" with a meaning it did not clearly possess at the time of its enactment. As Jefferson warned us, "Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything[] mean everything or nothing, at pleasure." (15 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Lipscomb edit. 1903) p. 450.)

Justice Brown's view of the federal government as a "leviathan... crushing everything in its path" is most definitely not in accord President Bush's larger statist policy agenda, which has perpetuated a "conservative" welfare-warfare state to an extraordinary degree. Still, she has not been poison to big-government conservatives in the past: the tax-hiking, spendthrift Governor Pete Wilson found her more than suitable when he appointed her to the California Supreme Court almost a decade ago.

Justice Brown's ability to traverse the political waters with dignity -- e.g., she called her contentious hearings before the California Judicial Nomination Evaluation Committee in 1996 "a good opportunity for character development" -- while also maintaining her intellectual integrity is refreshingly laudable. Which may make her entirely unsuitable for anything having to do with the Beltway.

Brit Pols on Drugs

Here are two recent posts I authored on my organization's blog, The D'Alliance. Hopefully, I will be a regular writer on drug policy related issues in that forum, as there's so very much to address on a daily basis. This forum will contain more strident verbiage, as well as material totally unrelated to drug policy. There will be a good (and more frequent) mix of material in the coming months here on NikosNotes, time permitting. My blog "to do" list is long -- so long that I don't really know where to begin.

Socialists are Good (At Least in Scotland... on Drug Policy)

In last week's election, the Tony Blair's Labour majority was whittled to 66 seats. Most commentators suggest that Prime Minister's support for the war in Iraq was a critical factor in losing many of those seats, especially those lost to the Liberal Democratic Party.

Watching selected election results on C-SPAN, I admired the way that all party candidates, even those of "minor" status, stood on a common platform vote tallies were issued. Each wore a ribbon representing his or her respective party, and in the case of a party known as LOONY many ribbons were on display.

I was also envious of the British electorate for having the privilege of a real multi-party system, something that neither Democrats nor Republicans will counsel in this country in any meaningful fashion.

The Economist featured a blurb recently noting that an organization that monitors the political preferences of drug users, the International Drug Monitoring Unit, found that the Green Party and the Liberal Democratic Party were the top choices. Most recent data can be found here.

This led me to evaluate the party platforms -- they are called "manifestos" in the UK -- of every major political party in the as it related drug policy. As with most platforms, they are hardly worth the paper they're printed on (or the pixels where they appear).

The verbiage from Labour and Conservative quarters were typically bland, but somewhat ominous. Conservatives called for rescheduling of cannabis to a higher level in British law, while Labour called for increased drug testing of all offenders. It must be pointed out that the Labour government is highly keen on the twin evils of drug testing and drug-sniffing dogs in the schools.

Enter the Scottish Socialist Party, which has exactly zero members in either the UK or the Scottish parliament. Like the Libertarians and Greens here at home, they have the good fortune to be able to focus on issues as issues.

I am not usually in the position of praising socialists or socialism. Ludwig von Mises had it right as far back as the 1920s, noting that is inherently unworkable as an economic system (chiefly due to the lack of an accurate pricing system) that also lends itself to nakedly authoritarian forms of political organization.

That said, I will let the SSP speak for itself, and I agree with the following analysis it its entirety:

The continued harassment and imprisonment of cannabis users is a vast waste of the time and resources of police, courts and social services. Virtually every study undertaken has found that cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. The time and money devoted to this futile crusade to clamp down on cannabis would be better spent fighting poverty and the root causes of drug misuse....

As well as having a serious illegal drugs problem, Scotland also has an even more serious alcohol problem. A huge proportion of violent incidents, including murder, serious assault and domestic brutality is rooted in alcohol abuse.

Alcohol abuse is also a colossal drain on the resources of the NHS and is a major contributory factor to the third world levels of life expectancy for working class men in some parts of the country....

In the long term, we want to build a society where instant oblivion to blot out the reality of everyday life is a less attractive option. In the meantime we will campaign for improved treatment and rehabilitation services for those suffering from alcohol and drug addiction.

I must say, these Socialist Scots are spot on!

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Liberal Democrats are Good Too (But Not as Good as the Scottish Socialists)

I know that the UK election is old news now, and for most Americans it was no news at all. The Liberal Democrats' platform was silent on drug policy, but it does endorse drug policy reform that is far and above anything coming out of the Labour or Conservative parties.

In fact, in the closing stages of the campaign, The Guardian reported that Tony Blair was nothing less than an utter demagogue the issue:

[T]he prime minister will renew his assault on the Liberal Democrats' drugs policy, which he believes would "signal to criminal gangs that Britain was soft on drugs and weak on crime," if they were ever implemented.

Writing in The Sun newspaper, he says the Liberal Democrats are committed to handing down non-custodial sentences to people caught in possession of heroin or crack cocaine.

"I have spent eight years fighting the war against drugs in our country," he said. "Charles Kennedy has called on voters to send a message to me and the government. I believe a vote for the Lib Dems would send a message that Britain is going soft on drugs."

So I guess that the Crown Prince of "New Labour," which is not so new anymore, has the same love for Laura Norder and inflamming the fear of the masses that would find him at home in either the Democratic or Republican party. Caustic rhetoric in the pursuit of more votes is never, ever a political vice.

The Liberal Democrats did issue a short paper on drug policy reform. Most of it is rather staid -- engaging in doses of what I brand "bureaucratese" -- and it certainly does not have the rhetorical gusto of the Scottish Socialist platform. But in comparison to their principal competition, it is nothing short of remarkable. Money quote:

Liberal Democrats believe the current emphasis on criminal sanctions for users actually makes the problem worse: it exacerbates the adverse consequences of drug use; it brings many young people, who would otherwise be law-abiding, into contact with both the criminal world and the criminal justice system; it undermines more promising strategies for minimising harmful drug use; and it diverts large public resources which could be better employed.

Liberal Democrats believe the time has come to reform the approach to drugs policy, so that there is an intelligent range of responses, with the emphasis on education, treatment for addiction and harm reduction strategies rather than blanket prohibition, but retaining criminal sanctions where justified.

A major political party actually embraces harm reduction?!? Take that, Mark Souder! The two-page document (pdf) is here. Thanks to The Guardian's blog on Election 2005, specifically on "Labour's Drugs Problem."

[For those of you out there in Delano, Charles Kennedy is the leader of the Lib Dem party. Yes, I am intentionally ripping off Rush Limbaugh, but using a different city in Central California to pick on...]

The Massie Affair: More Than a Hawaiian Tragedy

A few brief reflections on the new PBS documentary on the Massie Affair, where four "local" Hawaiians were accused of raping the wife of a military officer, acquitted, and then retried under duress from the military provincial governor of the Islands. It occurred around the same time my grandfather, Amado Oxiles, and great-grandfather, Juan Oxiles, emigrated from Manila to Honolulu.

As a Hawai'i native, I was saddened to see so much of the racial animus directed toward the "polygot" population on the part of the military and the mainland press.

What really struck me about The Massie Affair was how justice was in fact served in the courts on each occasion, which proved Princess Kawananakoa correct.

Justice was thwarted in the end by an incendiary press, an overbearing Congress, and a feckless governor.

The moral of the story, which resonates to this day: don't look for principled leadership from the military establishment, political leaders, or the newspapers. For each of them, facts are but trifling inconveniences in the pursuit of keeping the public misinformed--and thus resolutely malleable.

Justice Scalia Mum on Marital Sodomy

Volokh.com -- one of the best blogs out there for people interested in the law from a fairly libertarian perspective -- had a post today on a question posed recently by a student at NYU to Supereme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, where he was asked point blank if he sodomized his wife.

My take on the mini-controversy:

The main problem with Mr. Berndt's question is that it lacked a good prelude or any sense of context. He should have asked the Justice whether or not a legislature has the unqualified authority to subject individuals to criminal punishment or even civil reprimand solely because of their consensual, non-exploitative sexual practices.

Then he could have asked theatrically, "Justice Scalia, have you ever engaged in a consensual sex act with anyone that violated the law of the state where the act was committed?" Or assuming that he has lived in Virginia for an extended period of time, he could have honed his question further: "Mr. Justice, have you ever committed the act of sodomy with any person, including your wife, in violation of the statutes of the Commonwealth of Virginia?"

Sodomy laws facially applied to all persons, including married heterosexual persons, so a question about whether or not a Justice committed a crime is more than acceptable. In this case, it was imperative.

Ideally, a more carefully-crafted inquiry regarding Scalia's willful denial to recognize the liberties of gay citizens would have resulted in the following: (1) an extended comment on relevant Roman Catholic dogma pertaining to the "violence" which gay parents theoretically commit upon their children by virtue of their sexual orientation, and (2) his recusal from a prospective gay marriage case because of his stated viewpoints.

The terse question turned Justice Scalia into victim of mild sensationalism that strikes many as puerile and offensive. A far better approach would have prompted Scalia to twist in the caverns of his formidable intellect and expose his hollow rhetorical commitment to a jurisprudence that champions individual liberty.

April is Poetry Month! Who Knew?

I didn't... I haven't really been into poetry for awhile, but I take doses of it occasionally. Here is a fairly well-known one written about a half-century ago. Avoidance of loud and aggressive persons is not really an option for me in my line of work, and when you compound it with the fact that I fit right into that mold I would have to take a really good psychedelic to lose myself.

The first, third, fourth and last stanzas are my favorites.


Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

The Best Headline Ever!?

Not sure if this would qualify, but when I saw it in The Sacramento Bee I thought it was a bold testament to the current state of affairs: "A Passion for Liberty Languishes." The article is a local take on the findings of a recent Knight Foundation survey of 112,000 high school students on the First Amendment. The survey, and information on "The Future of the First Amendment" can be found here. Among its findings:

(1) Nearly three-fourths of students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit taking it for granted.

(2) More than a third think it goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

(3) Not quite half say newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

Additionally, three-fourths think that flag burning is illegal. What does this say about the character of American youth? Probably less than it does about the quality of the education they are receiving. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman and John Adams, once related a story about a lecture that he gave to a rather prestigious Midwestern liberal arts college. He spoke about the Revolutionary War, and after his talk a young woman (a student) came up to him and thanked him. She told him that prior to his talk she was totally unaware that the 13 colonies were located on the East Coast. To say the least, McCullough was astounded.

Admittedly, it is difficult to get Americans generally worked up about anything resembling constitutional abstractions. But in a vigorous democracy, every citizen would be keenly aware of the history of liberty and continuum of controversies encountered through the ages. The struggle for freedom is central not only to the Anglo-Saxon-American political experience, but also to the story of humankind.

On the other hand, the political class is certain to be happy that the citizenry is largely ignorant of their heritage, for it makes them ever more malleable even as their lives, liberties and sacred fortunes are stripped from them -- not just their right to free speech and association.

If the passion for liberty languishes for American students and the people generally, it is conspicuously absent from the minds and hearts of their representatives.

Self-Mutilation a "Fad"?

Last night on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the aunt of Jeff Weise admitted to a reporter that the troubled youth was once admitted to an emergency room after he was found cutting himself. From the aunt's account, the treating physician viewed his behavior just being caught up "fad." Self-multilation is not akin wearing torn jeans or participation in extreme sports. Given the history of trauma in young Mr. Weise's life, he was probably not doing it as an act of rebellion; it was almost certain to be a cry for help. It leads one to wonder what the state of adolescent health is on the reservation where he lived.

This headline from a recent Arizona Republic article is a statement of the obvious: "Self-mutilating Teens May Suffer from Mental Illness."

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has a good backgrounder on the issue, "Self-Injury in Adolescents."

Bob Barker: The Celebrity Godfather of Animal Rights Law

It was announced today that Bob Barker gave one million dollars to Northwestern University to fund an endowment for a course on animal rights law. Apparently, he has made similar gifts to Duke, Stanford, Columbia, and UCLA.

I wonder what an animal rights case law textbook looks like. From a cursory Google search, it looks like it is still very much in the theoretical stage a la Critical Legal Studies. For example, the National Association for Biomedical Research has a fairly extensive Animal Law Section on its website. Lewis & Clark Law School runs The National Center for Animal Law, which publishes the only law review devoted exclusively to animal law.

The legal system is filled with craven, hypereducated animals already (no apologies to creationists). So focusing on the real ones doesn't seem that much of a stretch. At first blush, I am against the concept of animal personhood on the basis that human beings have unique cognitive abilities that allow the use of nature to pursue interests beyond simple existence and base procreation.

Mr. Barker, a fellow Californian, should be made aware that he is currently living in one of only two states that prohibit private ferret ownership. Assemblyman Paul Koretz has introduced a bill that would remedy the situation. This bill is but the latest incarnation of a long series of bills that have become a perennial favorite sarcastic target of the Sacramento chattering classes. In the floor "debate" in the California Assembly last year, Tim Leslie let it be known that his vote was tied to whether the year ended in an odd number or even number. In the recall election, one candidate actually ran for governor exclusively on the pro-ferret plank.

The real comedy is that California law precludes ferret ownership in the first place. This is utterly unbecoming in a state where only a few years ago the voters passed an initiative banning the production and sale of horsemeat for human consumption.

Does Blogging Kill?

The Associated Press reports that young Minnesota gunman Jeff Weise regularly chatted on the internet and wrote entries on his Live Journal blog.

The source of young Mr. Weise's problems stem from the deep tragedy he faced in his life: a father who committed suicide, and a mother became incapacitated in a car accident. This indicates that he may have had a predisposition to mental illness. The psychotic episode may have been triggered by everyday growing pains, like in-home suspension, that may have seemed apocalyptic to him. One wonders whether the level of mental health services in his community was adequate -- not that he or his grandfather was likely to access such treatment were it available.

He was probably right about the garbage being fed to him at school, but that's the three-ton gorilla that gets routinely ignored American public policy generally. Who really cares about content, when there are so many performance measures to live up to?

How soon will it be before we see some upstart political hack talking about the dangers of internet usage among the young? Tipper Gore, where are you? (No, I'm just kidding about that... really I am).

Will This Blog be Illegal?

An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal notes that the self-anointed avatars of political virtue--incumbent politicians and the Federal Elections Commission (their administrative lackeys)--are looking at the blogosphere as a future venue of regulation. Currently, cyberspace if free of FEC meddling. Not for long. As the Journal put it, "The FEC must now decide just how to monitor and penalize all those attempting to corrupt the U.S. political system via modem."

Surely we can rely on the United States Supreme Court to ensure that private free speech will be protected in the context of political campaigns, right? Too bad that this particularly unsuccessful fallback strategy has already been tried by President Bush, who gladly signed McCain-Feingold into law.

The next logical step is public campaign financing, thereby ensuring that no person may spend money on elections or distribute political messages without government's sacred imprimatur.

Or the United States can endeavor to regulate the internet the way China and Cuba do, in order to protect democracy from upstart citizens who invoke "phantoms of lost liberty" and the otherwise tangible discomforts of life within our Republic.