Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, faces a grilling by Republicans as she begins her Senate confirmation. Venitist Robert Alt points out that as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Elena Kagan recommended that the Court not even hear a claim that the District of Columbia's complete ban on handguns violates the Second Amendment—a claim that recently succeeded at the Court.
The sole reasoning that she provided for denying the claim: "I'm not sympathetic." After giving such short shrift to an enumerated right, Kagan was intimately involved in gun-control policies in the Clinton White House, working to reclassify certain hunting rifles as assault weapons and to ban their importation. In Kagan's notes obtained from the Clinton Library, she even lumped the National Rifle Association together with the KKK as bad guy organizations.
President Obama has infamously stated that he would seek judges who would decide cases based upon their empathy for the parties involved, thereby elevating personal feelings above the rule of law. Elena Kagan has endorsed a similar approach, praising Justice Marshall's view that the Supreme Court exists primarily to assist the despised and disadvantaged as a "thing of glory."
But who are the despised and disadvantaged? Americans have already seen how subjective and dangerous this standard can be in the case of another Obama judicial nominee, Robert Chatigny. Judge Chatigny seemed to think that the Roadside Strangler, who had admitted to the brutal rape and murder of eight women, was despised and disadvantaged.
Chatigny believed the Strangler was the least culpable of anyone on death row. Why? Because he thought the killer's sexual sadism should be considered a mitigating factor,i.e., the fact that the Strangler was driven by excitement at the suffering of his victims somehow made him less culpable for the lives he took. Judge Chatigny's excesses are clear warning for those who would elevate subjective empathy above the rule of law.
Basil Venitis points out that violent offences have risen sharply. Yet police officers spend 50 per cent more time on paperwork than they do out on patrol. Kleptocrats' obsession with bureaucratic targets has hindered the fight against crime. They have launched endless initiatives and top-down schemes which have made little difference. The string of broken promises has undermined people's trust. We can't go on with the police filling in forms instead of fighting crime.
The Senate killed an amendment offered by Senator Tom Coburn(R-OK) that would have prevented using tax dollars to give Viagra to sex offenders. The vote, part of the health care reconciliation debate, was 57-42. The Coburn Amendment would have established a fraud prevention system to prevent government-run and taxpayer-funded plans from covering erectile dysfunction drugs for individuals who've been convicted of child molestation, rape, or other forms of sexual assault.
Venitis asserts the criminal justice system is broken. We need to rebuild confidence in the system and convince people it is working to protect them. Justice needs an approach of transparency, accountability, and decentralisation. We should restore responsibility and discretion to the police, getting them out of police stations and out onto the street fighting crime, while making them truly accountable to the people they serve. We should give people the power to elect an individual who will set the policing priorities for their community, and by providing detailed data about crime in their area. By giving people robust information and real power, they will be able to force the police to focus on the crime that affects their communities.
Fighting crime is about much more than catching criminals. To bring crime down for good we've got to break the cycle of reoffending and give those who have served their time a chance to play a positive role in society. The prison system is in crisis, and incapable of properly rehabilitating prisoners. Reoffending rates remain very high. Reoffenders are responsible for more than half of all crime. Thousands of prisoners are being let out early from prison because of mismanagement of the prison system. The consequences of this failure are enormous. We can't go on like this.
Gun laws have rendered millions of citizens defenseless; and drug laws, as in the case of medical marijuana, have left thousands of cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma patients helpless without the medical benefits of their preferred treatment. The interference with the right of people to choose their own medicines and means of self-defense has been a tragic matter of life and death for all too many peaceful citizens. The most fundamental argument against drug laws and gun laws is moral: people have a right to own themselves, defend themselves, possess property, and control their own bodies. In practice, when this right is thwarted, disaster ensues.
The drug war and gun control have led to huge black markets in drugs and guns. With millions of potential customers, people who enter the illegal businesses are people who are likely to take risks and perhaps break laws in other ways. Without the legal mechanisms of arbitration, disputes are often settled with violence. The more money spent on enforcement, the more lucrative and risky the business, and the more violence results. Economists have estimated that the drug war increases homicides by as much as 50 percent, and the Justice Department has estimated that 2 million crimes are stopped every year by private gun ownership. Few policies would cut down on crime more than ending the drug war and repealing gun laws.
Drug prohibition does more to make citizens unsafe than any other factor. Just as alcohol prohibition gave us Al Capone and the mafia, drug prohibition has given us the Crips, the Bloods and drive-by shootings. Consider the historical evidence: America's murder rate rose nearly 70% during alcohol prohibition, but returned to its previous levels after prohibition ended. Now, since the War on Drugs began, murder rates have doubled. The cause-effect relationship is clear. Prohibition is putting innocent lives at risk.
What's more, drug prohibition also inflates the cost of drugs, leading users to steal to support their high priced habits. It is estimated that drug addicts commit 25% of all auto thefts, 40% of robberies and assaults, and 50% of burglaries and larcenies. Prohibition puts your property at risk. Finally, nearly one half of all police resources are devoted to stopping drug trafficking, instead of preventing violent crime. The bottom line? By ending drug prohibition venitists would double the resources available for crime prevention, and significantly reduce the number of violent criminals at work in your neighborhood.
Venitis pints out the war on drugs has cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives with no results. Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. All the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference. All the people involved in law enforcment, treatment, and prevention have been wasting their time, misguided by politicians.
Legalization will move the marijuana industry above ground, just as the repeal of alcohol prohibition restored the legal alcohol industry. A small component of the marijuana market might remain illicit, moonshine marijuana rather than moonshine whiskey, but if regulation and taxation are moderate, most producers and consumers will choose the legal sector, as they did with alcohol.
Legalization would therefore eliminate most of the violence and corruption that currently characterize marijuana markets. These occur because, in underground markets, participants cannot resolve disputes via non-violent mechanisms such as lawsuits, advertising, lobbying, or campaign contributions. Instead, producers and consumers in these markets use violence to resolve disputes with each other and bribery or violence to resolve disputes with law enforcement. These features of vice markets disappear when vice is legal, as abundant experience with alcohol, prostitution, and gambling all demonstrate.
Legalization would result in numerous other benefits. Medical marijuana patients would no longer suffer legal limbo or social stigma from using marijuana to treat nausea from chemotherapy, glaucoma, or other conditions. Infringements on civil liberties and racial profiling would decline, since victimless crimes are a key cause of such police behavior. Quality control would improve because sellers could advertise and establish reputations for a consistent product, allowing consumers to choose low or high-potency marijuana.
Citizens have the right to decide how best to protect themselves, their families and their property. Citizens who have guns in their homes sleep more comfortably because of it. Studies show that where gun ownership is illegal, residential burglaries are higher. A man with a gun in his home is no threat to you if you aren't breaking into it. The police do not provide security in your home, your business or the street. They show up after the crime to take reports and do detective work. The poorer the neighborhood, the riskier it is for peaceful residents.
Only an armed citizenry can be present in sufficient numbers to prevent or deter violent crime before it starts, or to reduce its spread. Interviews with convicted felons indicate that fear of the armed citizen significantly deters crime. Foolish politicians and police now seek to ban semi-automatic rifles. They ignore the fact that only honest citizens will comply; criminals will still have them. Such a ban will only increase the criminals' ability to victimize the innocent. Pote tha kanei Xasteria, When it's Clear Day! Mikis Theodorakis's song makes it clear that Greeks on a clear day will use guns to clear Athens from Graecokleptocrats!
Eurokleptocrats are in cahoots with Orthodox mafias and Orthodox oligarchs. The three main Orthodox crime syndicates are the Tambov gang from St. Petersburg and Izmaylovskaya gang and Solntsevskaya Brotherhood from Moscow. Their activities focus on political corruption, church corruption, protection money, blackmail, drugs trade, shipping, commodity trade, and natural resources. Orthodoxy's circle of tycoons, such as aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, banking magnate Vitaly Malkin, and shipping magnates, have been investigated by Europol for involvement in crimes of Eurokleptocrats.
Victimless crime legislation requires a nanny state to enforce it. A nanny state must of necessity be a police state and therefore hostile to liberty. Real crimes that violate personal or property rights should be enforced to the fullest extent of the law; victimless crimes should be opposed root and branch.
Several studies have shown a link between death penalty executions and decreases in murder rates. Capital punishment does, in fact, save lives. Despite strong public support for capital punishment and its clear deterrent effect, federal, state and local officials must continually ensure that its implementation rigorously upholds constitutional protections, such as due process and equal protection of the law.
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