print“Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or a policeman], unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, and even killed. Evidence of tyranny in America is mounting” (“Tasers ‘R’ Us”)
You might call Heather Ellis’s behavior rude. That’s how the authorities described her cutting the queue at Walmart and refusing to be “removed” from the store by police. But for “belligerence,” The Machine brought the full force of the state down on Ellis. She was charged with “disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest and assaulting police officers,” and could have faced a jail term of 15 years.
In case you think I’m minimizing her crimes, let me not omit that Ellis also “stiffened her body” when the brutes tried to place her in the police car.
My oh my: doesn’t Heather know that as a subject she ought to have complied with her sovereigns?
“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.'” (“PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”)
Dr. Boyce Watkins, who spoke eloquently on her behalf on CNN, asked: “If ‘no one was seriously injured,’ why was she facing up to 15-years in prison?”
Heather Ellis took a plea deal. Writes Watkins: “According to the terms of the deal, Ellis will plead guilty to disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. She will also serve a year of unsupervised probation, attend an anger management course and serve four days in jail before the end of the year. Also, if she stays out of trouble for the year, the charges will be sealed and the arrest will not be on her permanent record.”
Imagine being forced into this predicament, when you are innocent in the natural law.
Statism, not racism, is at work here. But being black and alleging racism might have saved this woman from a fate far worse.
A good dose of anti-authoritarianism didn’t hurt Ellis and her supporters. Given their distrust of the state, blacks are often more defiant of the American police state. It serves them in good stead.
Update I (Nov. 23): I watched a segment of the reality show COPS. Two female police officers responded to a domestic altercation and ended up arresting the crying woman for the offense of not replying right away to the law’s queries. The bully babe in uniform explained to the poor woman that she was being arrested becasue she needed to be taught a lesson: “If a cop asked you something, you respond right away, you hear?”
Let’s see if I got this right: a woman in trouble calls the cops, who just about break down her door, yell at her for being out of it and cuff her, leaving children and an elderly mother unattended.
To serve and protect.
This kind of outlaw conduct from cops is clearly more common than we think. Having observed it, I’d have to conclude that it is best not to invite the bastards into one’s home.
Update II: A reader hereunder brings up the travesty that is the plea bargain, an abomination that is presented in every episode of “Law And Order” as a matter-of-fact route to “justice.” The truth is that such “wheeling and dealing” is anything but. This from “TRUTH OBSCURED IN JOHNNY JIHAD’S PLEA BARGAIN“:
There’s a reason the American Constitution emphasizes “the right of trial by jury.” The justice system’s mandate is to unveil the truth. This can only be done in a court of law, and in accordance with due process. The plea bargain is nothing more than a negotiated deal which subverts the very goal of the justice system: In the process of hammering out an agreement that pacifies both prosecution and defense, truth usually falls by the way. As the predominant method of adjudication in the United States, the plea bargain taints the system.
The illegitimacy of a government is never so obvious as when its true charge, serving and protecting citizens, becomes serving and protecting order, in the matters of speech, manners, habits, vices, diets, and attire. Illegal aliens, narco-gangs, terrorists, Muslim fifth columnists/colonizers… well it’s a rainbow world – learn to live with it.
The Founding Fathers would now be plotting how best to disassociate themselves from this debased patrimony – but Emily Post might be proud…. well, on second thought, no she wouldn’t.
The average black person’s distrust of the state appears to be limited to the local police force, and for good reason, as DWB is a blatant abuse of police power based on race alone. [Please quit the acronyms. I have no idea what this is!]
DWB aside, I have to believe that blacks have swallowed whole the belief that the government is their friend. Among the outrages:
1. The Tuskegee experiment – one would be hard-pressed to cite a more callous and appalling use of government power over blacks.
2. Public schools – Sure, they’re “free.” But can anyone argue that blacks are getting a quality education?
3. The minimum wage – A tried and true way of ensuring double digit unemployment for black youth.
4. Social Security – Those who die early help to fund those living longer. Blacks have the shortest life expectancy by race, and thus get the shaft.
5. Welfare – Encouraging teenage black girls to have children out of wedlock guarantees that their offspring will form a permanent underclass. Great for politicians. For blacks, not so much.
6. The military – With poor job skills and no future, a disproportionate percentage of blacks find the military to be their only option. They become fodder for every stupid foreign war the politicians can dream up.
7. Gun control – The inner cities are invariably gun-free zones for the law-abiding, making them easy prey for criminal gangs. Black-on-black crime is epidemic. The government criminalizes effective self-defense.
For these reasons and many more, it is a wonder that every black in this country isn’t an anti-statist libertarian. When will they learn?
DWB = Driving While Black.
DWB = driving while black.
Steve Hogan repeats the Big Lie about the Tuskegee Experiment. The Big Lie has been debunked. http://www.vdare.com/taylor/tuskegee.htm
As for the military, most of those coming back in body bags are white. Whites make up the majority of infantry and armor and take the brunt of casualties. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002519115_wardead25.html The majority of blacks in the military “fly” desks for most of their careers. I know this as I was raised next to an Air Force base in Southern Maryland. Almost everyone who resided in my childhood neighborhood was active duty, or retired from the military.
Social Security is a highly regressive tax. This is true irrespective of race. It should be opposed on this basis alone.
Blacks like government programs. This is why they are not anti-statist libertarians.
Ditto for Hispanics.
If everyone who got peeved and angry in a shopping line were arrested, this country would have fewer people than Canada.
Forgive my digression but, sadly, some REAL CRIME has hit home lately – it turns out that one of my daughter’s friends cound not attend her birthday party 2 weeks ago because she was sick. It appears that the 51 year old father of a classmate of that girl who is a good friend of my daughter was sexually texting her (and proposed her coming to an apartment for intercourse). This led to an FBI sting and he is now arrested. The community is completely shocked (a sort of Jeckyll and Hyde case it appears) and divided. I had to break the news to my 13 year old (since it was inevitable she would find out) who is quite creeped out. My daughter was at his house just one week ago.
However, in our modern society, the police are mostly concerned about THEMSELVES first, second, and third. The angry woman who probably needed 10 minutes to calm down was facing 15 years instead since she challenged their authority.
“If everyone who got peeved and angry in a shopping line were arrested, this country would have fewer people than Canada.” Myron Pauli
I have lived in the South, South West, and North West and I have never or almost never encountered such behavior.
Oh no! The coming glaciers will force a lot of rude people down South! I know, I’ll move up into Appalachia where Yankees fear to tread.
re Roger Chaillet:
Blacks (and others) historically favor the Federal government because what it gives is obvious whereas what it takes is not.
Ref: 11-23-09 update. Cop’s is a semi-scripted corroboration between the producer’s and cop’s for ratings and has as much to do with reality as, “Demolition house” on HGTV. My main concern is with “Heather Ellis” (Now that I’ve cooled off, well sort of.) CNN and ABC did a job of yellow sheeting this one. A: That woman is not a Christian, Jesus taught that you respect the property of other people; she stole another person’s place in line, then B: refused to move to the back which Jesus said she should do. C: Jesus also said that when you are judged to be in the wrong, you repay double. She never once even apologized to the people she cut in line, the clerk, Walmart. I won’t mention the police who had to put up with a rogue, because they have a thankless job. If she is an example of her church and its pastor (her father) then that is not a Christian Church. Jesus said that people who disobey his teaching would get exactly what she got, so justice was done, in spite of the phony race card.
The cashier was right: put her back and if she won’t behave, throw her out of the store. Forcing her to plead guilty or face a possible 15 yr. sentence is showing who is boss, isn’t it? I think forcing guilty pleas is phony justice, and under many circumstances is wrong . But its done all the time by our phony justice system .
Plea bargaining “justice” game. The prosecution charges Ellis with 101 charges of resisting arrest .. so that she folds her hands, pleading guilty to one charge – –
LESSON: never “disobey” the police.
Flip side of prosecutorial overkill – in the case of the father of my daughter’s friend trying to arrange sex with another friend of my daughter (ugh!!) – Right now, the suspect’s wife (probably at the suspect’s behest) is telling people that this was all orchestrated by the mother of the victim…. So the victim, her mother, the Fairfax Police, and the FBI all conspired to maneuver this pillar of the community to send lewd texts and e-mails and arrange a tryst with a girl whom he KNEW to be 13 years old. This is hard for me to fathom. But I could imagine a “dream team” of high priced gunslinger lawyers threatening to smear everyone in the community to the point that the prosecution folds its hands.
Justice American Legal Style is, unfortunately, a game to be won or lost (like football) and not a search for the truth. Plea barganing is just some of the dirt that goes behind closed doors as part of that game.
Is it a forced guilty plea, if you have been through the trial, and the judge says “It’s time for the jury to decide. The jury stands to go to the jury room for deliberations and the defense attorney jumps up and say’s “your honor, my client wants to plead guilty.” If she was not guilty, why didn’t she let her peers decide?
Whoa Robert Glisson! First her religion is irrelevant. Second, your definition of Christianity is faulty.
The punishment should fit the crime. Talk about your temper? If our justice system doesn’t repent then folks will conclude there is no justice and we might see riots and other violence.
When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,
And when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting. Proverbs 11:10
“your definition of Christianity is faulty.” No argument,from me.