Category Archives: Justice

UPDATE II: Lynching In-Absentia

Justice, Media, Military, Republicans, War

Pitchforks hoisted, the media-military collective has gathered to lynch Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in absentia. Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly have been especially quick to fill their studio colosseums with lynch-mobs eager to convict the man without due process. An example of the many leading questions with which the crowds were prodded:

All right, you — you lost your son. Every one of his platoon members said he left of his own volition. They heard a radio transmission saying there’s a guy looking for the Taliban, and that your son was among those that gave his life. They spent over two months looking for him. I can’t think of anything worse than losing a child. What’s your reaction to all this? (Interviews @SeanHannity, June 06, 2014 ‘No apologies’ for Taliban trade: Families of fallen respond to Obama. Guests: Cheryl Brandes & Ken Lucconi, parents of Matthew Marinek, Andrew & Sondra Andrews, parents of Darryn Andrews.)

Megyn Kelly has been almost as “fair and balanced” as Hannity in her assorted exclusives: “Platoon opens up about Sgt. Bergdahl’s desertion: Soldiers set the record straight amid outrage over trade.” Her suggestive kind of questioning: “… Raise your hand if you think he deserted. Wow. Raise your hand if you have some question about whether he deserted. Wow. All right.”

In this atmosphere, one worries that Bowe Bergdahl will off himself as soon as he can.

UPDATE I: Neither side is admirable or believable. Journalism should come closer to that truth.

UPDATE II: I don’t like Bergdahl and his creepy parents one bit. (I called them creep from day one.) His comrades, who seem to be as collectivist as they come, insist on exacting admiration for their mission. I don’t like any of this charade.

UPDATED: Contra The US, Shame Is Not Dead In South Korean Politics

Asia, Barack Obama, Bush, Justice, Morality, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

It may be symbolic, but the offer of resignation made by “South Korea’s prime minister … over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking,” and the death of hundreds of children, is not insignificant. And it is in stark contrast to the conduct of the American government and bureaucracy.

In the US, government uses its alphabet soup of agencies to spy on (NSA), intimidate (IRS), humiliate (TSA), and dispossess (ICE) the American people. Contra South Korea, nobody ever pays for these infractions, much less offers himself up for punishment or public shaming.

Assassin Sam deploys the most formidable military in the world to eradicate entire countries in the name of a mockery of freedom (Iraq)—and nobody ever resigns, much less offers to resign. Not Cheney, not Bush (of the WMD fame), not Colon Powell; not Condoleezza the skeeza (“who had categorically denied she possessed the analytical wherewithal to connect the dazzlingly close dots between Arab men practicing their aeronautical take-off skills and terrorism”), and not Obama (the abominable creature who drops drones on faraway villagers, leveled Libya, nationalized a 1/6 of the private economy and robbed many millions of their healthcare), nor dominatrix Lois Lerner (a vile and corrupt Obama operative), on and on.

In South Korea, shame and honor still play a corrective role in national politics:

… South Korea’s prime minister offered to resign Sunday over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking, blaming “deep-rooted evils” and irregularities in a society for a tragedy that has left more than 300 people dead or missing and led to widespread shame, fury and finger-pointing.
The resignation offer comes amid rising indignation over claims by the victims’ relatives that the government didn’t do enough to rescue or to protect their loved ones. Most of the missing and dead were high school students on a school trip. Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry that sank April 16, a prosecutor said. …
… “As I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as prime minister,” Chung said. “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”

MORE.

UPDATE (4/27): Myron Robert Pauli writes: “… not to mention Slick Willie whose conduct was probably not criminal due to prosecutorial sandbagging and irrelevance but whose conduct was shameful enough to merit resignation. The woman in charge of GSA during the “hooker conference in Vegas” scandal did resign not that it did her any good [the lower level malefactors were not punished and, in typical overreaction, government scientists WERE and continue to be severely restricted].

The Feds Are Not Through Tormenting Poor Amerindians

America, History, Justice, Law, Private Property, Regulation

Before Cliven Bundy there were the Dunns, whose ordeal with the “BLM Brownshirts” began decades back, and should break even a heart made of flint, such is the destruction to the lives, land and livestock of this family of Amerindians.

As wonderful William N. Grigg tells it, “the Dann family spent two decades fighting in federal courts to defend their property against the depredations of the federal government. As members of the Western Shoshone nation, the Dann family had inherited land that was protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution – parchment barricades against aggression that were quickly reduced to ashes by the flame of elite ambitions.”

Below is the culmination of one of the Bureau of Land Grabs’ roundups:

A previous roundup nearly resulted in tragedy when a member of the family doused himself in gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire. The 59-year-old man, who had no previous criminal record, was tackled, beaten by law enforcement officers, arrested, and prosecuted on terrorism-related charges.
After spending several years in prison, that supposed terrorist, Clifford Dann, was allowed to return to the tiny, ramshackle homestead he shares with his 82-year-old sister, Carrie, who is the same age their elder sister Mary was when she died in an accident while repairing a fence in 2005. …

… In 1974, the US Government sued the Dann family, claiming that they had committed “trespassing” by grazing their horses and cattle on land that legally belonged to them. Successive rulings by federal judges upheld the Government’s claims.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the Dann family’s appeal, insisting that the matter was closed when the federal government paid itself $26 million to consummate the theft of the Shoshone lands. The Feds would eventually claim that the impoverished Indian family owed nearly $5 million in grazing fees and interest.
The BLM staged its first cattle rustling raid against the Danns in April 1992. At about 4:30 in the morning, the ranch lands were invaded by a column of vehicles that decanted a platoon of BLM Brownshirts. Not intimidated by the bullying display, Carrie plowed through the picket line and cast herself into a cattle chute to prevent hireling cowboys from loading her stolen cattle onto a truck.
“My land has never been for sale,” Carrie told Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones, who rather than defending his constituent’s rights was aligned with the invaders. “It’s not for sale now, it’s not for sale tomorrow, either. And that’s the way it is, Mr. Jones.” …

MORE.

Why The Land Belongs To Bundy

Justice, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, States' Rights, Taxation, The State

The current column, now on WND, applies the doctrine of natural law and Lockean homesteading to explain “Why The Land Belongs To Bundy.” (Cliven Bundy is the farmer from Nevada who is “in mutiny against the federal government”) The essay exposes “both political factions” for “siding with the state and against natural law,” and explains why, ethically and logically, there is no such things as “government grass.”

Here’s a short excerpt from the (middle of) the essay:

NO SUCH THING AS ‘GOVERNMENT GRASS’

Unlike the positive law, which is state-created; natural law in not enacted. Rather, it is a higher law—a system of ethics—knowable through reason, revelation and experience. “By natural law,” propounded McClellan in “Liberty, Order, And Justice,” “we mean those principles which are inherent in man’s nature as a rational, moral, and social being, and which cannot be casually ignored.”

Tamara Holder, another Democrat, grasps the natural law not at all. “Can I go into your house and steal stuff; can I trespass onto your land?” she hollered at Sean Hannity. Holder, of course, was implying that the disputed land belonged to the state and was as good as the government’s house.

In siding with the heroic homesteader against the BLM, Mr. Hannity’s heart is in the right place. He and Fox News colleague Greta Van Susteren probably staved off a Waco-style massacre, in Bunkerville. When the militarized BLM, SAWT teams and all, trained sights on the Bundy family and their supporters; the two turned the cameras on the aggressors, who then retreated.

In the course of butting against buttheads like Holder, however, Mr. Hannity has refused to engage his head. (The anchor, moreover, is performing no public service when he gives this and other prototypical TV tarts a platform from which to spread ignorance.) Ms. Holder: the government doesn’t have a house. There is no such thing as “government grass”! Not in natural law. Government cannot morally claim to own “public property,” explain Linda and Morris Tannehill, in “The Market For Liberty.” “Government doesn’t produce anything. Whatever it has, it has as a result of expropriation. It is no more correct to call the expropriated wealth in government’s possession property than it is to say that a thief rightfully owns the loot he has stolen.”

Then there is the matter of logic. “The public” is an abstraction. In logic, an abstraction cannot possess property. To borrow from libertarian political philosopher Murray Rothbard, “There is no existing entity called ‘society’—there are only interacting individuals.” To say that “society” should own property in common is essentially to say that “government bureaucrats” should own property, in our case, at the expense of the dispossessed homesteader. …

… Read the complete essay. “Why The Land Belongs To Bundy” is now on WND.