Category Archives: Rule of Law

A conservative celebrates “growing government” — in the judicial branch

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Our regular contributor Bryan Caskey celebrates the Senate’s passage of legislation expanding the state judiciary:

Six More Family Court Judges On the Way

Normally, I view additional government spending with a healthy dose of skepticism. However, even as someone who extols the virtues of fiscal restraint, I can absolutely say that we need more judges here in South Carolina.

Finally, the State Legislature has realized that South Carolina needs more judges to help manage the rising caseload here in the Palmetto State. Today, the SC Senate passed a bill approving the creation of six new family court judges and three new circuit court judges; nine in total.

This has been long overdue. South Carolina has the fewest number of judges per population and more than twice the national average of case filings per judge. Each year, Justice Toal tells the legislature these facts in her State of the Judiciary Report.
As a practicing lawyer here in South Carolina, I can tell you that wait times for hearings are longer than they need to be. I do a fair amount of family court work, and I do it throughout the state. Some counties run a tight ship, and others are an absolute nightmare.
In a certain county, in family court, just to get a hearing scheduled, not heard, can take up to six months. That’s insane. I know the wheels of justice are slow, but six months to get a hearing scheduled means the wheels of justice have fallen off. If you want to get the dockets moving, you have to have more people available to get the cases disposed of. Alternative dispute resolution (mediation) has taken some pressure off the court, but you cannot force people to agree. Sometimes, especially in family court, you have to have an adjudication…

I give him joy of those new judges. They were needed. It’s good to see at least one of the neglected areas of state governmental responsibility get at least some of the resources it needs.

And that would make it less “political” HOW?

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I was a bit surprised by this move by Joan Brady:

A Midlands lawmaker says the investigation into Gov. Nikki Haley has gotten too political and is encouraging it be investigated by the state Attorney General’s Office instead of a legislative committee.

“The State Attorney General’s Office has the experienced investigators and staff necessary to address this matter in a fair and timely manner,” wrote Rep. Joan Brady, R-Richland, a member of the House Ethics Committee that is looking into charges that Haley illegally lobbied while a member of the House.

In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Brady continued the committee is “not positioned to hire the criminal investigators and lawyers necessary to fully investigate this complaint.”…

On the one hand, the attorney general should be someone who could credibly do this. That is the one great advantage, theoretically, to having the A.G. elected separately from the governor.

On the other hand, what’s our experience been? The A.G.’s office was much criticized for supposedly dragging its feet on the Ken Ard investigation. I’m not saying Alan Wilson DID delay dealing with that sticky wicket; I’m saying he was accused of it. And I think it fair to say that criticism was… political. In the end, the thing was handled properly, but along the way there were plenty of recriminations. Political recriminations.

Does an investigation by lawmakers of one of their own have a political dimension? You bet. But so does an investigation by an elected official from outside the General Assembly.

And as it happens, the way the law is set up, it’s the Legislature’s job to investigate this. Rep. Brady not wanting to do so comes across as little more than wanting to ditch a hot potato.

Maybe it is more than that. If so, Rep. Brady should present clear evidence that the process has been compromised. That is to say, more compromised than that party-line vote to dismiss the charges the first time around.

The innuendo here — raised by Nikki Haley (who would never seek to influence an investigation of herself — would she?) — is that Bobby Harrell has improperly influenced the investigation by urging the panel to DO something this time.

I suppose you could see that two ways — as Harrell out to get Nikki, or as the speaker wanting a trustworthy ethics panel that won’t punt at the first whiff of public scrutiny.

If Rep. Brady has evidence that Harrell has crossed a line, let’s hear it when the panel meets on Wednesday. If not, if it’s just that the members are in an uncomfortable position here — well, Alan Wilson would be, too, if you dumped it on him.

Cindi cites Her Alleged Majesty for contempt

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As was anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the rule of law, Cindi Scoppe was aghast at our governor’s behavior last week, both when she goaded the state GOP to defy the law in order to help rid her of a troublesome senator, and when her office responded childishly to the State Election Commission’s refusal to play along.

But Cindi wasn’t struck speechless. From her column Sunday:

If the governor had been the one speaking, she might have added, L’etat, c’est moi.

At least when Louis XIV said it, he had a legal basis to do so. He was, after all, an absolute monarch.

When our founding fathers created this nation, they didn’t just reject the British monarch. They rejected the idea of a monarchy. They rejected imperial rule. And nowhere in the fledgling nation was that concept more thoroughly rejected than here in South Carolina.

The governor of South Carolina isn’t even a real governor. Yet this one fancies herself royalty. An autocrat. With the divine right of queens. L’etat, c’est moi.

She had already demonstrated that she was hypocritical. And careless with the truth. And imperious. Now add lawless. And contemptuous.

Actually, it’s the court that needs to add that last one.

Although the Election Commission blocked the party’s effort to defy a court order, that doesn’t change the fact that the party, at the urging of our governor, acted in a way that was “calculated to obstruct, degrade, and undermine the administration of justice.” That’s the definition of contempt of court, which our Supreme Court has said judges should punish in order to “preserve the authority and dignity of their courts.”

The court cannot ignore such blatant disregard for its orders. It needs to find the governor in contempt. And while it’s at it, it should do the same to the state Republican Party, and the Florence County Republican Party. This is about far more than the candidates who have been mistreated by our state. It’s about the authority of the court itself.

But Nikki Haley wouldn’t know anything about that.

When did truckers become so law-abiding?

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Over the weekend, I was a passenger in my wife’s car when I saw the following amazing sight, and reported it on Twitter:

Just saw a tractor-trailer do a U-turn at Gervais and Huger. Really. Brown Trucking Co. of Lithonia, Ga.

Seriously. We were several cars back from the light on Gervais, waiting to proceed eastward (with the McDonald’s on our right) and this truck, which was going the way we were, pulled out into the intersection, cut way left and swung across several lanes to turn all the way around within the intersection, and head back toward the bridge over the river. Cars converging on the intersection from four directions just froze — probably in amazement. He did it on the first try, which makes me think it wasn’t his first time.

And this got me to thinking of something. I got to thinking about how you seldom see truckers do really crazy stuff anymore.

I mean, compared to back in the ’70s, about the time of the CB radio craze. Back then, it was seemingly an outlaw culture. Driving on an interstate in a normal car (much less my Volkswagen Rabbit I had back then), was truly taking your life in your hands, with kamikaze behemoths hurtling down upon you at ungodly speeds.

If you saw a trucker doing less than 80 in those days, it meant he was climbing a steep grade and hadn’t gotten as much of a running start as he’d like.

It was SOP for truckers to bear down upon you from the rear (especially if you dared to get into the left lane to pass somebody), closing at speeds that would ensure that it was all over if you tapped your brakes. You had to veer out of their way the first chance you got; it was imperative to survival.

Then, suddenly, just a few years ago (I want to say it was the middle of the last decade), I noticed something — truckers were almost all driving at or below the speed limit. They were no longer aggressive, much less homicidal. Cars passed them, instead of the other way around. The interstate seemed much less dangerous than it had been.

Anybody else notice this? And does anyone know why it happened? Was it:

  • Rising fuel prices, which made it imperative that they drive in a more economical fashion?
  • Tougher enforcement? (If it was this, it happened in multiple states at once.)
  • Those “How Safe is My Driving” signs with the phone numbers?
  • A change in trucker culture, a maturation beyond the “Smoky and the Bandit” stage?

Or something else I’m not thinking of?

Theories are welcomed. Anyone who actually knows something from within the industry would be even more so.

The execution of the wrong Carlos

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The Guardian has a fascinating story about the Columbia Human Rights Law Review‘s expose of a case in which, its exhaustive research indicates, an innocent man was executed in Texas.

Some excerpts:

From the moment of his arrest until the day of his death by lethal injection six years later, DeLuna consistently protested he was innocent. He went further – he said that though he hadn’t committed the murder, he knew who had. He even named the culprit: a notoriously violent criminal called Carlos Hernandez.

The two Carloses were not just namesakes – or tocayos in Spanish, as referenced in the title of the Columbia book. They were the same height and weight, and looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. When Carlos Hernandez’s lawyer saw pictures of the two men, he confused one for the other, as did DeLuna’s sister Rose…

At the trial, DeLuna’s defence team told the jury that Carlos Hernandez, not DeLuna, was the murderer. But the prosecutors ridiculed that suggestion. They told the jury that police had looked for a “Carlos Hernandez” after his name had been passed to them by DeLuna’s lawyers, without success. They had concluded that Hernandez was a fabrication, a “phantom” who simply did not exist. The chief prosecutor said in summing up that Hernandez was a “figment of DeLuna’s imagination”.

Four years after DeLuna was executed, Liebman decided to look into the DeLuna case as part of a project he was undertaking into the fallibility of the death penalty. He asked a private investigator to spend one day – just one day – looking for signs of the elusive Carlos Hernandez.

By the end of that single day the investigator had uncovered evidence that had eluded scores of Texan police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges over the six years between DeLuna’s arrest and execution. Carlos Hernandez did indeed exist.

Liebman’s investigator tracked down within a few hours a woman who was related to both the Carloses. She supplied Hernandez’s date of birth, which in turn allowed the unlocking of Hernandez’s criminal past as the case rapidly unravelled…

You should just go read the whole thing. Or for that matter, the original study.

This, of course, is one of the main reasons I oppose the death penalty. There are others, but this one is enough for a lengthy discussion…

Of COURSE state primaries should be in August

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Exaggerating as so many readers do, Rusty DePass (who probably agrees with editors far more often than he thinks) expressed shocked pleasure that he actually agreed with something in an editorial in The State on Sunday.

He was referring to this passage in an edit about the issue of all those candidates disqualified from running in the June primaries:

The Legislature has to fix this problem.

That won’t be easy, but it must be done. And with the primaries just five weeks away, it must be done immediately. It would be difficult to keep the elections on schedule even if every member of the Legislature agreed to a solution. That won’t happen, so part of the solution needs to be delaying the primaries, which we shouldn’t hold until August to begin with…

I assured Rusty that advocating August primaries is a long-standing position of the editorial board. It certainly is of mine.

And it is of Rusty’s. Rusty takes credit for the one time state primaries were held at a rational time in all the years since I moved home to South Carolina — 1992, when a lawsuit over reapportionment delayed the vote.

Rusty tells the story this way: As head of the state election commission (or was the past chairman at this point? I forget now), he wrote to the judge in the remap case asking that the primaries be delayed on account of the legal action. He recalls with satisfaction that all the lawyers he knew were shocked and appalled that he would so address such a view to the judge in the midst of a lawsuit. But the judge read the letter aloud from the bench and said, that’s just what we’ll do.

I had forgotten that part of the story, but I remember how gratifying it was to have the primaries thus separated from the legislative session for once.

Even back when we had loads of reporters and other resources, June primaries were extremely difficult for the newspaper — and other news organizations — to cover adequately. The people who covered legislative and other state elections were the very same people who covered the Legislature. The legislative session didn’t end until the first week in June, and didn’t really, really end until the sine die return session a couple of weeks later.

That lack of coverage, of course, benefited incumbents enormously, because there were fewer opportunities for lesser-known challengers to get their names in the paper. And name recognition is a huge part of the battle.

But the timing benefits incumbents in other, more direct, ways. The reason reporters are so extremely busy in those last weeks of the legislative session is because that’s when almost everything of consequence in the session happens. And those weeks happen to be after the filing deadline for the primaries.

So it is impossible for anyone to decide to run against an incumbent (except as that long shot of long shots, a write-in) on the basis of how that incumbent votes on the most important votes of the session. Aside from the fact that even if the challenger had already filed, he or she will get little coverage.

It’s an absolutely ridiculous problem, which would be completely fixed by always holding the primaries in August, as some other states do (including Tennessee, the “other state” whose politics I have the most experience with).

Senate may try to restore candidates to ballots

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This just in from Wesley Donehue over at the SC Senate:

Columbia, SC – May 4, 2012 – Senate Judiciary Chairman Larry Martin today announced that he will call an emergency meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, May 8, and 10:00 a.m. for the purpose of discussing and passing legislation aimed at allowing candidates affected by the recent Supreme Court decision back onto primary ballots.

A joint resolution introduced by Senator Kevin Bryant and others would give candidates who filed the rest of their paperwork on time to have an additional 12-hour period to provide their Statements of Economic Interest to political party officials in order to complete their filing requirements and preserve a spot on the ballot.

Martin, who supports the Bryant measure, said he will call the meeting in order to get the resolution to the Senate floor as quickly as possible.

“I don’t fault the Supreme Court for their decision, but clearly there is a deficiency in the law if so many people were adversely affected by these requirements,” Senator Martin said. “Our democratic process should not be derailed by what amounts to a technicality. People across South Carolina deserve a chance to vote for those who made a good faith effort to comply with the law, particularly when they had every reason to believe they would appear on the ballot. The General Assembly needs to step in quickly and rectify what I believe would be a real disservice to voters if allowed to stand.”

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Don’t know what I think of that. I was just starting to warm up to the idea of a bunch of people running general election campaigns outside of the party system…

What do y’all think?

Doing the candidate limbo (how low can you go?)

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Still trying to find some reliable info as to who is, and who is not, a legitimate candidate in next month’s primaries, following this development:

The state Supreme Court Wednesday ordered S.C. political parties to remove up to 100 candidates from their June 12 primary ballots, sending candidates and voters into a tailspin in an election year already fraught with confusion.

Any candidate who did not file a statement of economic interest — listing income, property and other financial information — at the same time they officially filed for office must be removed from the ballot, the court ruled in a unanimous decision. The ruling does not affect incumbents seeking re-election or officeholders seeking another office because they already had economic-interest statements on file.

The deadline to file to run was March 30…

I asked Adam Beam (who wrote that story) today whether he had more info about which candidates were affected. He said, “No. I have an unofficial list of just House candidates. But I’m not 100 percent sure it is accurate.” Then he added, “Election Commission will post a list of qualified candidates by noon tomorrow.”

So, we observers are left in limbo.

In the meantime, any candidates out there who know you have been disqualified, please speak up here, and tell us your story…

Apparently, it’s all over for Eric Holder

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Well, it’s all over for Eric Holder. Chad Prosser, who is running for Congress in the new 7th District, put out this release yesterday:

CONSERVATIVE REFORMER CHAD PROSSER CALLS FOR ERIC HOLDER TO RESIGN

Former Sanford Cabinet Member points to interference in SC internal affairs and mishandling of Fast and Furious scandal as reasons for Holder’s immediate resignation

(MURRELLS INLET, SC) – In the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to intervene in the Fast and Furious “Gunwalking” Operation, unprecedented intrusion into the internal affairs of South Carolina, his perjury before Congress and his intentional obstruction of a Congressional investigation into who is at fault for the death of U.S. Border Control Agent Brian Terry, Chad Prosser is calling for United States Attorney General Eric Holder to vacate his office immediately.

“Holder’s role in blocking the efforts of South Carolina to crack down on illegal immigration and protect the integrity of elections in our state are reason enough for him to resign. Adding perjury, obstruction of justice, and an impending citation for contempt to the case against Holder should be enough for President Obama to ask Eric Holder to leave his cabinet post immediately,” said Prosser.

When Holder was forced to appear before Congress to testify regarding Fast and Furious on May 3, 2011, he told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he first heard about the operation “over the last few weeks”. Shortly after his testimony, a briefing memo dated July 5, 2010 and addressed to Eric Holder was uncovered which outlined Fast and Furious and contradicted his sworn statement to Congress. Since that time, the Justice Department has repeatedly denied the media and Congress access to documents surrounding the scandal.

Now, congressional leaders are set to pursue a contempt citation against Holder to force him to comply with multiple requests for government records outlining the failed operation.

“We need an Attorney General committed to upholding and enforcing the law, not one who makes his own set of rules and breaks the law,” added Prosser. “Eric Holder needs to resign immediately and our nation is in desperate need of a president who appoints competent leaders who understand, respect and abide by the law.”

… More information on Chad and his campaign for conservative reform in Washington can be found at www.chadprosser.com.

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Sure, Mr. Holder may work for the president of the United States, and not for Chad Prosser, and not have a clue who Chad Prosser is, but of course he has no choice but to resign now, right? I just don’t see how he can withstand this withering pressure. I mean, Chad has demanded that he quit. And he is a “conservative reformer.” Just ask him; he’ll tell you.

OK, back to being semi-serious…

What did Mr. Prosser hope to achieve with this out-of-left-field release about something that was in national, not SC, news a year ago? Apparently, the message is “Trust me to attack anyone in the Obama administration, regardless of whether it has anything to do with me or any of the issues in my district.” Because, you see, that’s what the GOP electorate wants.

Is he right to assume that? Is it that bad?

Just to be clear: Without the mandate, you can just forget about any sort of health care reform

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I get sick to my stomach of reading stuff like this:

The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with a question that looks increasingly significant after conservative justices battered the individual mandate: Should the rest of President Barack Obama’s health care law stand if the requirement to purchase insurance falls?

Most of the justices appeared opposed to throwing out the entire law, but their views on how much to keep in place were murky, and the divisions between conservatives and liberals were not always as clear cut as they were Tuesday….

If you get rid of the mandate that puts everyone into the system, then just scrap the law. Because without everyone in the system, we’re stuck with the same system we have now, which causes us to pay more than other developed nations for some of the worst health outcomes.

Either everybody is in it, or there’s no hope of affordability. And without affordability, nothing you come up with can work in the real world.

Surely the justices are all intelligent enough to understand that.

Wouldn’t it be horrible if our Constitution — the glory of what America is about — proved to be a barrier to our having a rational health care system? Well, that will be the case if the Court holds that you can’t require that everyone be in the system.

The only hope at that point would be if the barrier was simply this requirement of everyone having to buy insurance. Perhaps we could still have the workaround of a single-payer system that covers everybody. That, of course, would be far better than requiring everyone to purchase a hodgepodge of private products. The fact is that you’d still be requiring everyone de facto to buy in (through taxes) to a system that covers everyone, but maybe it would work as a de jure workaround. It sounds possible to this layman.

But then, the political barriers to taking that far more rational approach were (and will probably remain) so great that the Congress passed the cockamamie Obamacare to start with. So the thought doesn’t cheer me up all that much.

Obama: ‘If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.’

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On a previous post, Phillip said that he likes Bill Maher (or at least excuses him) because “I find myself agreeing with him about 99% of the time.” I made it fairly clear that I do not.

But there are people who I find myself agreeing with to a degree that it is remarkable — a rare experience for me, since I reject the orthodoxies of left and right (which enable the people who do adhere to them to find themselves agreeing with certain people a lot). A good example would be Tony Blair. When he expresses his reasoning behind a position, I am struck by how much it is just like what I would say — or wish I were clever enough to say.

I have a similar experience with President Obama. There are a lot of things I disagree with him on, rather vehemently in some cases. But then he expresses himself on an issue in a way that strikes me as just right, and I am deeply impressed. (Needless to say, on these occasions he’s being about as different from Bill Maher as any one person can be.)

Today was such an instance, when the president carefully weighed in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy. I haven’t commented on it myself because I have thought that everyone else was commenting in such a facile manner — generalizing the incident to fit their own political and social predilections — and I couldn’t find a way to grab ahold of the matter in a way I found meaningful.

But then the president said this:

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this,” Mr. Obama said. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen.”…

“Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Mr. Obama said, his face grim. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”…

“You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said, pausing for a moment. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Normally, I tend to react against such a personal, emotional response. But in this case, it was exactly right, and the president was wise to recognize it.

To me, this isn’t some microcosm of racial injustice or gun culture gone wild or any other generalization. This is a case — as near as I can tell, and my knowledge of the case is limited — of a confused, emotional, panicky, cowardly man with a gun in his hand pulling the trigger and causing a deep, personal, specific tragedy.

Yes, the president made a genetic, racial observation in saying that his theoretical son would look like the victim in this case. But the more important part of it is that he appeals to “every parent in America” to look at this situation AS parents, rather than as participants in a political debate. It says to whites who may want to recoil and get indignant at seeing, for instance, Al Sharpton exploit yet another tragedy, Set that aside. Look at the personal tragedy. Think of your own kids. That’s what I’m doing.

That’s the wisest possible thing he could have said.

If there’s anything else useful to say about this case, that is the best starting point.

Glenn McConnell’s full statement

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Trying to catch up with my e-mail, I see that Wesley Donehue sent me this yesterday. I quoted McConnell’s statement in part earlier (or rather, quoted The State quoting it), but here is the whole thing. Hope you can read it OK:

As I said, he’s a guy taking a bullet for principle. He’s not enjoying himself.

Sen. Glenn McConnell takes a bullet for SC, accepts the useless, nothing job of being Gov Lite

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As I said earlier today, the only way Glenn McConnell would give up power to be lieutenant governor would be if he felt that his personal honor as a gentleman was at stake. And it appears that that is just what has happened:

Stepping into the role is McConnell, who is giving up one of the most powerful positions in all of state government for a mostly ceremonial role whose only duties are to preside over the Senate and run the state Office on Aging.

Speaking with reporters after a closed-door meeting in his State House office, McConnell said becoming lieutenant governor is “a personal sacrifice” but his reading of the state constitution makes it clear that the Senate President Pro Tem has a duty to become lieutanant governor when the post is permanently vacated.

“After much thought, prayer and discussion, I have decided that I have a moral obligation to my oath of office and to the constitution of this state,” McConnell said in a prepared statement. “It is an obligation that compels me to do the right thing no matter how difficult it may be to me personally.”

McConnell said he expects be sworn in on Tuesday. McConnell would not say who his preference was to replace him as the leader of the Senate, and he did not rule out the possibility of running for his state Senate seat again in four years.

Wow. What a weird, back-handed way for the mighty to fall.

This is the one really significant thing to have happened in all of this. Whether Ken Ard had continued to be lieutenant governor or not was of no consequence (which is why you never caught me paying much attention to the matter one way or the other). It doesn’t matter who the Gov Lite is, unless the governor dies or leaves office suddenly. But the most powerful man in the Senate, who has done more than anyone else to set the course for the General Assembly for the last couple of decades, has just walked away from power (for now).

That’s really something.

Whatever happens next, I must say — my hat’s off to you, senator.

Refusing to cooperate with police: I don’t hold with it, even if it’s the smart thing to do

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Here’s something I have trouble with…

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish brings to our attention this advice: Don’t consent to police searches. As he quotes Scott Morgan:

It’s always possible that police might search you anyway when you refuse to give consent, but that’s no reason to say “yes” to the search. Basically, if there’s any chance of evidence being found, agreeing to a search is like committing legal suicide, because it kills your case before you even get to court. If you refuse a search, however, the officer will have to prove in court that there was probable cause to do a warrantless search. This will give your lawyer a good chance to win your case, but this only works if you said “no” to the search.

And if you watch the video, you see a lecturer with a ponytail advising us how to politely refuse. That runs against my instincts (and, I’ll confess, the ponytail doesn’t help reassure me that the advised behavior is consistent with being a good citizen — silly, since I grew up in the 60s and used to have much longer hair than that, but the reservation is there).

This brings back to mind the fascinating lecture that Kathryn brought to my attention sometime back, explaining with great force and conviction why we should never answer police questions at all, but rely on the 5th Amendment no matter how innocent we know ourselves to be.

It’s very persuasive — but still runs against my grain. Maybe it’s my core, gut conservatism (real conservatism, not the kind you hear Republican politicians talk about all the time), which involves a deep respect for authority. Or my communitarianism, which demands good citizenship. I don’t know.

But here’s my prediction of what would happen if I were seriously questioned by police about anything: I would be deeply torn between my own desire to cooperate fully, and all this advice I’ve heard not to. And this would make me very uncomfortable and agitated. It would show on my face, intensifying the officers’ suspicion. The police would turn up the heat, thereby increasing my discomfort over my dilemma, thereby making me seem more guilty…

I think I’ll just stay in my house from now on and not answer the door.

SC and the media: They shoot editors, don’t they?

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This morning I was on Tom Finneran’s Boston radio show for the second time this week (Tom is the former speaker of the Massachusetts House; I met him in Key West last week), and was asked what the nation should make of the roar of approval that Newt Gingrich got last night when he blamed the media for bringing to light his second ex-wife’s allegations.

I explained that historically, the media got off light on that one. Playing to resentment to those “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the media is of course an old Republican pasttime across the country. But in South Carolina, it can get you everywhere.

Getting away with asking for an open marriage is nothing. This is a ploy that will enable you to get away with murder.

Literally.

So I regaled the Boston audience with the tale of N.G. Gonzales and James H. Tillman. Most of you know the story, but for those who don’t…

N.G. and his brother founded The State in 1891 for a specific purpose: to oppose the Ben Tillman machine. N.G. wrote the editorials, which lambasted the Tillmanites with a vehemence that would shock most newspaper readers in my lifetime, but which was par for the course in those days.

One of the targets of editorial vitriol was James H. Tillman, Ben’s nephew. James was the lieutenant governor, and aspired to be governor. N.G. wasn’t having it, and criticized him heavily during the 1902 campaign. Tillman lost. Not long after that, on January 15, 1903, N.G. was walking home for lunch. The newspaper office then was on Main St., and Gonzales had to turn the corner of Main and Gervais to get home. As he approached the corner, Tillman headed his way, coming from the Senate side of the State House with a couple of senators.

Tillman went straight up to Gonzales, drew a gun, and shot him in cold blood. He did this in the presence of many witnesses, including a policeman.

As N.G. fell, he cried, “Shoot again, you coward!” As one who inherited his mission of writing editorials for The State, I’ve always been proud of him for that.

He died four days later.

Tillman was arrested and charged with the murder, of course, but the defense obtained a change of venue to the friendlier Lexington County. A strategy of self-defense was attempted, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then,  the defense entered N.G.’s editorials into evidence.

The jury acquitted Tillman. The ostensible reason was self-defense, but since there was nothing to support that — Gonzales was unarmed and not threatening Tillman in any way — it has always been assumed that the jury let him off because the son-of-a-bitch editor had it comin’.

A postscript:

Early in 2003, a number of events were held to mark the centennial of Gonzales’ murder. At one point, Solicitor Donnie Myers, an avid student of the case, was asked to present his popular lecture on the subject to employees of The State. I introduced him, and stood to the side as he enthusiastically launched into it.

At the critical point in the narrative, channeling Tillman, Donnie reached dramatically into his briefcase and, pulling out a .45 automatic pistol, brandished it menacingly in my direction. Me being the editor.

I grinned at him, enjoying his act (I had seen it before). But our then-publisher, Ann Caulkins, who admitted to a greater-than-usual fear of firearms of all sorts, practically gasped aloud. She later admitted that for a split second there, she actually feared the solicitor was going to shoot me.

If that had happened, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

I want my, I want my, I want my Wikipedia

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OK, so that doesn’t quite work, poetically speaking. What’s MTV? Is that a dactyl, or what?

My alternative idea for a headline was “Money for SOPA, money for dopa.” Which do you like better?

Anyway, I’m pretty ticked at somebody, I’m just not sure who, for the fact that I can’t use Wikipedia today. At least Google’s working (having opted for a purely symbolic “blackout”), but what good is it when the best source it keeps sending me to is Wikipedia?

Just a moment ago, trying to look up “dactyl,” I of course clicked on the first thing Google gave me, and for a split second saw the Wikipedia entry on “dactyl” before I got the above brick wall.

This would be OK, if I could just tell myself that Wikipedia isn’t available today, and not try to use it today. But I could hold my breath that long more easily. Using Wikipedia is an autonomic response. I think. I mean, I think that’s the term, but I can’t frickin’ check on Wiki!

At whom am I ticked? Jimmy Wales? Or the gigantic coalition of old-media companies lined up in favor of SOPA? For the last two days, I’ve been hearing in-depth reports on NPR from both sides, and I’ve heard all sorts of claims, but one thing I haven’t heard is an explanation of what on Earth the legislation does. This is the simplest explanation I’ve found:

Under the current wording of the measures, the Attorney General would have the power to order ISPs [internet service prividers] to block access to foreign-based sites suspected of trafficking in pirated and counterfeit goods; order search engines to delist the sites from their indexes; ban advertising on suspected sites; and block payment services from processing transactions for accused sites.

If the same standards were applied to U.S.-based sites, Wikipedia, Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, Google and Wired could all find themselves blocked.

Such requests would need to be reviewed and approved by a judge. But accused sites would get little notice of a pending action in U.S. courts against them, and, once blacklisted, have little effective means of appeal.

But then, I heard advocates of the legislation this morning on The Takeaway (they were being interviewed by a woman who belongs to one of the associations backing SOPA, by the way) insist that it wouldn’t do that, that it had been amended to remove all objectionable characteristics, and that they’d be happy to have it amended further, etc., etc.

I just don’t know. But I do know this: Today, I’m inclined to cast my vote on Saturday for whichever candidate convinces me that he would keep Wikipedia up and running. SOPA or no SOPA, I don’t care.

(At this point, imagine Sting’s voice fading out, repeating “I want my, I want my…” At least I think it’s Sting. How am I suppose to check?)

By all means, let’s ban kids from ATVs

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Admittedly, not quite all kids use ATVs this way, it was the best freely-available picture I could find to illustrate the post. attritubion: Royalbroil

I got a bit of a debate going on Twitter this morning when I reacted to this tragic news:

HENDERSONVILLE, SC (AP) – A 12-year-old girl has died after a wreck on an all-terrain vehicle in Colleton County.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reported rescue crews were called to a home near Hendersonville shortly after 1:30 p.m. Monday.

Colleton County Fire and Rescue Director Barry McRoy says witnesses said some children at a birthday party were driving two all-terrain vehicles in the woods behind the house when 1 of the vehicles rolled over.

The girl was treated by paramedics and was flown to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston where she died. Her name has not been released…

My reaction was simple, and straightforward: “Why is this legal?”

My rhetorical question was quickly reTweeted by two or three users, with Tyler Jones adding an answer: “Rednecks in the Gen Assembly.”

Palmetto Record added this elaboration, “The under-16 helmet law was signed earlier this year — should kids now be banned from ATVs altogether?”

To which my answer is, yes.

But the libertarian view was represented, as it always is. This time, my friend Bryan Cox played the Mark Sanford role, saying, “I’ll bet more kids die riding in cars than driving ATVs. Ban those too? Risk is inherent to freedom.”

For me, that was easy to answer. Riding in cars is an unavoidable risk, in a society that lacks adequate public transit. Riding an ATV is absolutely unnecessary. Big difference.

Bryan elaborated on his point by saying:

If govt should ban those under 18 from activities deemed an unnecessary risk — why not skiing, swimming, football as well?

My reply? I merely expressed my weariness with the “We shouldn’t do A unless we also do B” argument, which is always presented as a way of preventing us from doing A, never as a way of advocating that we do B. In fact, B is generally deliberately chosen for its utter lack of political viability.

Bryan added, “The judgment ATV riding isn’t of value, but football is = opinion. Govt making those arbitrary content calls isn’t freedom.”

No one can ever accuse me of valuing football. But I also know there is little point in trying to ban football, in this society. There is a chance of banning ATV riding by minors. So we should do it, and at least save the lives we can.

That’s because that’s what government is — communities deciding for themselves what they will countenance and what they will not. It’s not some entity out there imposing something. It’s us. And I know my neighbors. They won’t even consider banning football. So I’ll say it again: Let’s save the lives we can.

Perry ads amazingly trite, yet revelatory

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I continue to be fascinated by Rick Perry’s TV ads, largely because they are so startlingly lacking in anything that might ordinarily fascinate an active mind.

They are so formulaic, so trite, so astoundingly lacking in originality, that it is truly remarkable.

And on top of that, they are badly executed — which is also surprising, since you would think that anyone would at least be able to present such simplistic messages without tripping over his laces. Take this bit of the script of the ad above:

The fox guarding the henhouse is like asking a Congressman to fix Washington: bad idea.

Obviously, what is meant here is, “asking a Congressman to fix Washington is like the fox guarding the henhouse.” The idea being criticized, being held up as a bad idea, is asking a congressman to fix Washington, and the universally understood cliche to which it is being compared is the fox guarding the henhouse. But the announcer gets it completely backward. Even if you told me that the script writer’s first language wasn’t English, it wouldn’t excuse this, because logic knows no language.

But, as bad as these ads are, they do reveal things about Perry, and with great economy of language.

Once again, what we learn about him (as we did back here) is that he assumes — or should I say, presumes — that the president of the United States is an absolute monarch who rules by fiat, with the other branches being completely subject to his will.

In this case, he plays on populist resentment of people who make more money than the voter (and he’s a Republican, right?) to endear the voter to his plan to emasculate and hobble the legislative branch. Elect me, he is saying, and I will wave my scepter and this thing you resent, this Congress, will become a poor, feeble thing, unable to wield any power any more (and unable to be a check on my power), too busy trying to scratch out a living back home to be an obstacle to the new King.

I say all this as someone who — as my readers well know — is a longtime champion of executive power here in South Carolina (a governor in control of the whole executive branch, a strong mayor in Columbia). But that’s because on the state and local levels here, the executive is so weak as to be unable to perform its proper function in a healthy government. That is not the case in Washington, and in any case, Perry overreaches to an extent that is shocking, and would be under any circumstance. Yes, he does so out of deep ignorance of the rule of law under our constitution, but that doesn’t make the (fortunately remote) prospect of him being president less chilling.

There’s a deeper irony here. In reality, the only way to bring about this poor shadow of the present Congress is, of course, to ask Congress to do it. No president could bring that about unilaterally. And as he says, asking Congress to “fix” Washington (according to his notion of “fixing”) is indeed like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Or the other way around. Whatever.

Let’s talk about porn

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Just briefly…

First, we really look bad as a community that we wait and we wait for a really classy, upscale business like Whole Foods to locate here, and BAM! the only porn superstore in the metropolitan area suddenly materializes right in front of it. Seems like there should be some way for the city to stop this. If we can’t, then private business would have a legitimate beef with the city.

Second, and this is the thing I really wonder about…

Who, in the 21st century, actually needs to go to a physical store to get pornography? I mean, really? Back before spam filters got good, we were all smothering in the stuff in our inboxes. And as things stand now, any kind of porn you can imagine is a few keystrokes away.

OK, so maybe you’re a traditionalist, and you like to own the DVD. Fine. You can still order it on the Internet, with the added bonuses of convenience and privacy.

How does a “superstore” fit into the business model of the porn industry? What is the need for retail outlets? And if it does work for them, what must the markup be?

Basically, this is a problem that has NO reason to be. And yet, we have it, right here in River City…

ALREADY they’re starting with this in Iraq?

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OK, we just left, and already they’re up to these kinds of shenanigans in Iraq?

Washington— U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John McCain (R-Arizona) released the following statement on recent developments in Iraq:

“We are alarmed by recent developments in Iraq, most recently the warrant issued today by the Maliki government for the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi. This is a clear sign that the fragile political accommodation made possible by the surge of 2007, which ended large-scale sectarian violence in Iraq, is now unraveling. This crisis has been precipitated in large measure by the failure and unwillingness of the Obama Administration to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government for a residual presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, thereby depriving Iraq of the stabilizing influence of the U.S. military and diminishing the ability of the United States to support Iraq.

“If Iraq slides back into sectarian violence, the consequences will be catastrophic for the Iraqi people and U.S. interests in the Middle East, and a clear victory for al Qaeda and Iran. A deterioration of the kind we are now witnessing in Iraq was not unforeseen, and now the U.S. government must do whatever it can to help Iraqis stabilize the situation. We call upon the Obama Administration and the Iraqi government to reopen negotiations with the goal of maintaining an effective residual U.S. military presence in Iraq before the situation deteriorates further.”

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Let’s hope it’s not as bad as Sens. Graham and McCain worry that it is. I mean, hope’s all we have left, right?