California Democrats' Contempt For 6th Amendment

Party boy Ben Hueso is driving the wrong way on a one-way street again, figuratively speaking. In April, he sponsored a bill in the California State Senate, SB 603. If signed into law, SB 603 would permit a court to "to appoint intermediary standby counsel for the limited purpose of presenting the defendant's examination of the victim."

In other words, if a defendant is representing themself, (in pro per) they would be prohibited from cross-examining their alleged victim. This would be "limited" to the following charges: 1) a registerable sex offense, 2) a violent felony, 3) felony stalking, 4) felony elder abuse, 5) felony domestic violence, and 6) felony child abuse.

The stated purpose of enacting this statute is a pure appeal to emotion. Allowing the accused to "personally present the examination of the victim creates an emotionally traumatic situation for the victim." According to the bill's text, "the state has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of victims of sex offenses, child abuse, stalking,and other violent crimes."

It would be easy to convince me that the state has a compelling interest in protecting the psychological well-being of victims of violent crimes. That is why a court may permit videotaped testimony in situations where "further testimony in any of the qualifying cases would cause the victim emotional trauma." Most people would support this, especially if the alleged victim is a child.

California trial courts already have tools to protect witnesses. They can protect witnesses from undue harassment. They can provide closed-circuit television cross-examination. A litigant who is disruptive or intimidating may be removed from the courtroom or prohibited from representing themselves.

The most important reason not to pass SB 603 is that it is blatantly unconsitutional. The text of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution states that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The accused has the natural right to confront their accuser.

Why would a state senator and even the San Diego District Attorney support a statute that would lead to verdicts being reversed? Look no further than the names of the supporters of the bill, right at the top. It's a who's who of victim advocacy groups. What's very interesting to me is the inherent tension between victim advocacy and due process.

Take the Crime Victims Action Alliance as an example. They came out against California Proposition 47, which reduced the classification of most "nonserious and nonviolent property and drug crimes" from felonies to misdemeanors.

Crime Victims United also came out against Prop. 47. Now that Prop. 47 is law, Crime Victims United is behind an assortment of loophole-closing bills. California AB 46 would make possession of "club drugs" GHB or ketamine felonies. Possession of GHB would be de facto intent to commit sexual assault, because they are also known as "date-rape" drugs.

It is my suspicion that these advocacy groups are not representative of all victim groups, just victim groups that belong to protected classes. Like SB 603 supporter Alliance For Hope, who declare that "The Problem" is that "1 in 3 women have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime." They would support building a shelter as long as it's not for men.

These particular victim groups have enormous emotional appeal right now. I think the pendulum has swung toward victim's rights because it is easy political point scoring. I wonder how far the pendulum will swing in this direction before reversing itself.

Supervisor Roberts And The Baying Hounds

San Diego news media are actively pursuing investigations into the conduct of County Supervisor Dave Roberts. By that, I mean that they are acting as publicists for women making allegations of a hostile work environment. The specter of former mayor Bob Filner looms large over the city and county. There were allegations about Bob Filner for years. The Democratic leadership in the state knew about Filner's behavior for years and ignored it.

Now the gimlet eyes of the trial lawyers have turned their attention to Roberts. Chief of Staff Glynnis Vaughan resigned on April 14, complaining of a hostile work environment. She retained the counsel of attorney Lynne Lasry, and sought a $75,000 severance package. When the County turned her down, she quit.

In her resignation letter, Vaughan cited herself as a defenseless employee trying to bring forward reports of abuse and perceived ethical misconduct. I haven't seen anything resembling abuse, and the closest thing anyone can identify as ethical misconduct is a $1,000 expenditure for baseball cards featuring Roberts' likeness.

A hostile work environment is a technical legal term. It forbids harassment based on protected status, such as sex, race, age, or religion. Oh, if only Vaughan could prove that Roberts, a married gay man, harassed her because she was a woman. Jackpot!

Former scheduler Diane Porter also resigned, after seeking a $34,000 severance package. She has retained counsel as well, and is seeking a $250,000 lump sum settlement. She worked for the county for a total of nine months. During that time it appears she did nothing but document a long list of grievances against the supervisor.

It appears the main grievance against Roberts is that he shows favoritism toward someone he hired himself. He hired Harold Meza and appears to favor him. There aren't any allegations of sexual misconduct, only anguish over a possible "appearance of impropriety," according to Vaughan.

The most serious allegation against Roberts appears to be instructing Porter to "send out campaign letters seeking early endorsements, and then instructing her to teach other staff members on how to do the same thing." This appears to be a use of county employee time for political purposes. I don't see how this is grounds for her wrongful termination lawsuit against the county. Especially since she wasn't terminated, she quit.

Political analyst John Dadian has been making the rounds on local news broadcasts. He describes the situation as "a bad situation getting worse, ... and every day a new story comes out." In other words, it's not the nature of the evidence, it's the seriousness of the charge.

I wanted to understand why I feel compelled to counter the weight of the accusations against Roberts. I guess it's the way the media is trying the man in public. Trying to say that four resignations in five months in a supervisor's office is de facto proof of guilt. The women trying to cash in is very unseemly. I'm the taxpayer here. If the county is legally exposed by his conduct, then the sooner he leaves, the better. Maybe I just like swimming against the current.

UPDATE Glynnis Vaughan has filed a $475,000 claim against the County. In her claim, she accuses the supervisor of "misusing county funds and creating a hostile work environment." I wonder how long before the word "misogyny" comes to be used to describe the supervisor. The dirty little secret of male homosexuality is that they practically invented misogyny. And all of the "traumatized" former staffers are women. Interesting to see whether women or gays are the more protected of classes in this dispute.

Moral Panic At Venice High

Lavrentiy Beria famously said to his boss, Josef Stalin, "show me the man, and I will find you the crime." Beria was the U.S.S.R. security chief during Stalin's regime.

This is kind of like the moral panic about sexual assault that is gripping America. The L.A.P.D. has a security apparatus that would make Beria proud. In March, they swept into Venice High School and arrested ten boys. The boys were led away in handcuffs in front of their classmates. Several more were arrested away from school.

Yesterday, the L.A.P.D. pulled an Emily Litella. Never mind! Prosecutors have decided there was "insufficient evidence" to press charges against the fifeteen students.

The boys were arrested because allegations were made that they committed forced sexual acts upon the girls. Other sexual acts were reportedly "consensual with individuals who are too young to give consent."

If police are going to arrest every high school boy who has consensual sex with a person too young to give consent, they are going to have to empty out the high schools.

Is it possible that the sex acts were not forced? Looks like it. There were allegations of verbal coercion. Being persistent is going to be criminalized as coercion. These boys may have had their reprieves from this heinous crime grandfathered in before nationwide affirmative consent laws are codified.

Which is not to say their lives aren't ruined. "The Oarsman, the school’s newspaper, reported last month that the boys no longer attended Venice High."

Los Angeles reporter Eric Leonard of KFI has been on top of this case, and reported on morning radio that "a parent of one of the girls may have been pressuring the L.A.P.D." to make arrests in this case.

LA County DA's Office says it won't file charges against 15 Venice High School students accused of sexual assault. http://t.co/UH4sWDHpc0

— KFI AM 640 (@KFIAM640) May 20, 2015

I would really like to see the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat logs of the two girls involved. I'm guessing there are some along the lines of we still haven't really had a paul-emma chill sesh since summmmerrrr.

Camden, N.J.: Now Safer Than Detroit

President Obama gave a speech today in Camden, N.J. I was listening to conservative talk radio, and heard the speech mentioned in one of the quarter-hour news briefs carried by CBS News. The news briefs that are invariably slanted in favor of President Obama or Democrats, and against the G.O.P.

My ears pricked up when the newsreader replayed the part of Obama's speech where Obama declared that "Violent crime in Camden is down 24 percent. (Applause.) Murder is down 47 percent. (Applause.) Open-air drug markets have been cut by 65 percent. (Applause.)" This use of statistics by the President is begging to be fact-checked.

I will take the President's word about the reduction in "open-air drug markets." How could anyone objectively determine whether a group of people are selling drugs? That's purely an applause line.

In September of 2014, the Camden Police Department released crime statistics for the period between January 1, 2014, and August 31, 2014. They were able to then compare the reported crime rate between that period and the same periods in 2012 and 2013. The data does show a decrease in violent crime when comparing 2014 to 2012. Total reported murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults dropped by 22 percent.

Wait, don't most rapes go unreported? Anyway, the President is committing the fallacy of using cherry-picked statistics.

That 2012 is the starting year is the main reason the 2014 statistics look so good in comparison. 2012 was a high-water mark for crime rates. What if a different year is used as the starting point? In 2000, there were 24 murders in Camden. Last year, there were 33. In other words, murders have risen almost 38% since 2000.

One way police departments can improve their crime statistics is by reclassifying violent crimes as non-violent. Chicago has been cooking the books. So has Los Angeles. I am not alleging that any sort of reporting malfeasance is taking place in Camden, but it would not be surprising.

The New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association wrote a letter to Obama in which he advises the President to be wary of the crime statistics. PBA President Pat Colligan points out that since the Camden city police force was replaced by the Camden County police two years ago, the turnover rate has skyrocketed.

Obama wasn't just in Camden to congratulate the city for becoming so safe. He was also touting his program, called My Brother's Keeper. The goals of the program are, among others, to ensure all children enter school cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally ready, all youth graduate from high school, and that all youth out of school are employed.

I have the solutions to the youth employment problem. Abolish the minimum wage, and E-Verify job applicants. Let a fourteen-year-old get an after-school job as a gas jockey for five bucks an hour. They will learn to show up on time, ready for work.

And I have a solution to the school children who are not "emotionally ready" for school. Start a program called My Baby's Daddy. Since the Democratic Party figured out they have more support from single mothers than married women, they have been hell-bent on destroying the family.

Miley Cyrus' Signalling Tattoos

I noticed a tweet today from someone I follow, letting me know that Miley Cyrus was photographed frolicking topless in the surf while on vacation in Maui. Since I am a sexist old bastard that enjoys the objectification of women as much as anyone, I clicked over to see.

Miley Cyrus Completely Topless In Maui (Photo Album) http://t.co/ugzBhJUqId

— BlueBellOnSea (@BlueBellOnSea) May 10, 2015

Miley Cyrus is an excellent example of a beautiful young woman that does absolutely nothing for me. Some women, you want to see naked. Miley, on the other hand, is much better keeping her kit on. And the thing is, she willingly mutilates and alters herself. In effect she is sterilizing instead of sexualizing her image.

The first thing is that hair. Women who cut their hair pixie-style willfully degrade their sexual market value. Say Miley's raw number is about an 8.5. She has an abundance of God-given beauty: blue eyes, nice smile, good body, symmetrical. A pixie haircut is an automatic half-point deduction.

One thing revealed by the photos is the countless tattoos Miley has on her body. She has at least twenty of them. It's like the advertising signage plastered around a minor league baseball park. It cheapens her.

There is a dreamcatcher that covers most of her side ribcage. Both of her arms are completely covered. At least she doesn't have a tramp-stamp. The tattoo that women get right above their ass is the biggest detraction from beauty and distraction from pleasure since body-piercing became popular.

It used to be that only sailors got tattoos. It was considered utterly non-conformist. Today, getting a tattoo is about the most conformist thing a young person can do.

It's all about in-group signaling. In the animal kingdom, some animals mimic other animals to try to trick them. A spider may mimic an ant that he wants to eat. Some snakes have coloring that marks them as dangerous when they are not. And "the fork-tailed drongo tricks meerkats into abandoning their prey by feigning meerkat alarm calls."

Which group is Miley signaling to, and why? Does she believe that branding herself like a piece of cattle will signal to interested males that she is sexually adventurous? Possibly, though it's worth keeping in mind the evolutionary reasons that males have long preferred women who guard their virtue. Such women were seen as less likely to seek sex outside the marriage, and males would have a higher degree of certainty that the children he was pouring resources into belonged to him genetically.

#FHRITP

Meet the guy who was fired from his high-paying job over a #FHRITP video http://t.co/6mfvZQR9xq Some good news this morning

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) May 13, 2015

Well, I'm certainly glad that Jessica's boiling rage has been turned down to a simmer. And all it took was ruining a young man's life.

I had no idea that #FHRITP was even a thing until about an hour ago. I once saw a guy being interviewed by a female reporter, a few months ago, and he asked her out. That was charming. #FHRITP is vulgar and degrading, and Shawn Simoes is a Grade-A Jackass. Alcohol and testosterone is a dangerous mix. I don't think he deserved to be fired.

He was fired from Canada's Hydro One because he violated the company's Conduct Policy. Hydro One's corporate affairs director Daffyd Roderick said, "we are committed to a work environment where discrimination or harassment of any type is met with zero tolerance."

Erm, Daffyd, the insult didn't occur in your work environment, it occurred at hers. Why not just admit that if you didn't fire him, radical feminists and their white knights would descend on your company in spasms of anguish and hostility? In the United States, an employee can be fired for any reason or no reason. I don't know if they have to show cause in Canada, but that cause is pretty flimsy.

Meanwhile, Jessica Valenti is silent on the degrading speech of Saida Grundy, who has tweeted, among other things, that "white masculinity is THE problem for America's colleges." Grundy is a professor at Boston University. Her speech has brought plenty of criticism, but the university is standing by their racist, with the president remarking that "At Boston University, we acknowledge Dr. Grundy’s right to hold and express her opinions."

Boston University President Brown has a stronger cause for termination than Hydro One did. According to Title IX, educational opportunities must not be sexually discriminatory. Grundy has created a hostile educational environment for white males. #FHRITA.

The line for deciding whether speech is abusive or not, is whether or not a protected class is offended.

Media Truther Exposes "The Burden"

Local WB affiliate San Diego 6 News had a segment this morning about a movie called The Burden. The full title is The Burden: Fossil Fuel, The Military, and National Security. The website for the movie implores the concerned viewer to help "free America of its dangerous fossil fuel addiction."

The Facebook page for the movie declares that "America's dependence on fossil fuels is the greatest long-term national security threat facing the nation." Not nuclear weapons being proliferated by non-state Islamists. Not North Korean submarines popping up off the coast of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle and launching ballistic nukes. Not an $18T national debt. Not an energy grid vulnerable to EMP. Oil dependence. Just last week our gravest national security threat was climate change.

I would imagine a Venn Diagram intersection of people who are likely to want to see The Burden looking something like this:

This movie's potential audience is mainly Malthusian environmentalist nutjobs. None of them are going to see a movie that glorifies the U.S. military. The last thing a weepy leftist wants to see is an AC-47 Gunship performing night operations. Perhaps the producers are hoping that they can evangelize people who support the military, into supporting radical environmental policies. Good luck with that.

The news segment begins with the comforting image of a clenched fist, and the phrase Eco Revolution.

The clenched fist is the symbol of every marxist movement. The labor movement in Wisconsin, for example, depicts the state as a blue fist. The logo of radical feminism is a clenched fist within the female gender symbol. And the very idea of revolution is enough to make Trotskyites swoon. The wet dream of every Leninist is to be the one deciding who faces the guillotine.

The young man being interviewed for the news segment is named Tiger Palafox. Eco Revolution is his Youtube channel. He is the manager of a local nursery, Mission Hills Nursery. He has an active Facebook page, but hasn't tweeted in three years. He appears to have a loose affiliation with San Diego Six News. Until I know more, I regard him as a rent-seeker in the ecosphere. He made one extremely problematic comment, though, saying "fossil fuels and oil dependency has created a lot of the wars that they're fighting."

Hey Tiger, if you get a chance to introduce a screening, and there are any active duty military or veterans, you might not want to lead with that one.

The executive producers of The Burden are Jeanine & Guy Saperstein. Guy Saperstein is past president of the Sierra Club. Guy Saperstein believes that President Obama is a conservative. Saperstein is one of those kooks who believes that people who eat meat are destroying the planet. He believes that dogs are worse for the environment than SUVs. He will kindly allow indulgences for environmentalists, however, writing that they just "need to give up their big dogs and turn to small dogs to save the planet."

The idea that parts of the military should run independently of fossil fuels has merit. We already have nuclear-powered submarines and carriers. I like the idea of military bases being off the grid, and running off micro nuclear reactors. I don't have a problem with solar arrays providing power to installations. The problem is what do you do when the sun goes down? Installing battery arrays is the solution, but that involves the logistical issue of transporting all that weight.

One thing that makes the U.S. military without peer is the ability to project power around the world. You can't design a battery-powered F-35. The joules required for mach-2 are available in batteries, but they would add too much weight to the airplane. And an F-35 can be refueled in mid-air. A battery pack cannot be hot-swapped in mid-air.

Happy Attachment Disorder Day

I'm about to leave the house to work my Mother's Day shift at the restaurant. A respiratory infection is trying to station itself, and my mood is sour. One thing that annoys me, is that I am expected to wish all the mothers at my workplace a happy day.

My mother has been gone more than six years. I don't think I have once thought to myself, "gee, I really miss her." She was a complicated person, with an unblemished soul and an assortment of personality disorders.

My father characterized her as the ultimate "earth mother," a phrase that was popular in the 1960's. She personified fertility and motherhood. When I was born, the first thing she said to my father was, "we have our Matthew." I have an abiding conviction that baby Matthew was wanted, and loved. It's my saving grace.

I was the first son, and the third child. Certainly I was a prince for a time.

Around my fifth or sixth year, my father left the house, and never came back. I don't really remember having a father in the house, except a vague recollection of lots of yelling fights, and a vivid recollection of having my rear end spanked so hard, my sister and I were bawling on our beds with our red asses in the air.

So instead of a two-parent lottery winner, I got a single-mother scratch-off ticket. She had to work full-time, and raise five of us. There were no extended family in the area to help raise us. We did have a live-in for awhile, until my oldest sister was pressed into duty.

If a parent's job is to prepare their children for independence, I will say that while we were unequipped for adulthood, we were eager to leave. As long as I was little and vulnerable, there was continuous fear of physical punishment for what seemed arbitrary reasons. A slap across the face could come out of the blue. A belt against a bare bottom was not rare. When I had physically grown a bit, the physical abuse was replaced by verbal, emotional abuse. I was always amazed how ugly she could speak to me, then answer the phone with sugary sweetness.

I think a lot of my detached emotional style is because of the abuse, and some of it was being raised by a parent with a New England background. There was no safe space to have unwanted emotions in our house.

Which is why it is hard for me to admit that I hated my mother, and I still do. I would like to be able to forgive her, but I don't want to continue to repress my feelings. I have developed a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, with a little fearful-avoidant thrown in for good measure. Emotional self-sufficiency is one of the windmills I constantly tilt at.

In case the reader is wondering if the fact that I despise my mother, extends to all women. Am I a -gasp- misogynist? Truthfully, today I would answer yes to that question. I don't trust women. I fear women. And yes, there is plenty of hate in there.

Thankfully for my soul, I am incapable of acting on my hate. As I believe that I was wanted and loved at my most critical developmental stage, I believe this to be true of every human being. As such, I am an extremely empathetic person. I am so sensitive, that I can detect the most subtle distress cues. As a defenseless child who always had to be on alert, it was a necessary adaptation.

Defenestrate The Nation

Watched a little Face The Nation this morning. Bob Schieffer had a discussion with Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, NPR's Michele Norris, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, Washington Post's Michael Gerson and Julianne Malveaux. The subject was "Searching for Solutions in Baltimore."

Turned out that Progessive solutions are the only ones being considered.

Julianne Malveaux was wearing eyeglasses with neon purple frames. Malveaux may be best known for her comments in 2007 about the Duke lacrosse case. The day after Attorney General Roy Cooper’s press conference declaring all three players “innocent” and victims of a “rogue” prosecutor, she said, "Those kids don’t deserve an apology. They hired strippers . . . They were known for hooliganistic behavior." In other words, this woman cannot accept the truth, even when it is slapping her upside the head.

Malveaux is also known for wishing for the early death of a Supreme Court Justice with whom she disagrees. She said on her radio program that "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that's how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person."

Malveaux's understanding of economics is also suspect. She seems to agree with Elizabeth Warren, who has indicated that she considers $22 an hour (or about $45,000 a year) a living wage. Wages may be sticky downward, but the price of labor is not somehow magically immune from ironclad rules of supply and demand.

I didn't intend for this post to turn into the Julianne Malveaux is a misanthrope rant. Her purple frames really got to me. And Ramesh Ponnuru didn't offer a single conservative opinion. William F. Buckley should turn over in his grave at the attenuation of consequence of National Review.

What I really wanted to focus on was an exchange about Toya Graham, the single mother who smacked around her son during the Baltimore Riots. Malveaux saw the incident as a "beating," and noted that "this beating young people goes back to enslavement." She believes this was a "public humiliation of a young black man" and that it was "excessive."

Malveaux has either never read the Bible, or keeps faith in her talking points. Proverbs 13:24 instructs parents of children that they should punish them with the rod and save them from death. This isn't license to wail away. The example I think of is if a child runs into traffic, they should get a sharp smack on the bottom. To turn away instead, is to sentence them to death.

Toya Graham's son was gamboling in traffic. He was taking a giant shit, right where he should be able to eat. Even my dogs know better than that.

Shake Down For The Vote

Watching a little CNN coverage of the marches and protests in Baltimore. One thing that was interesting, was that some of the protest organizers are registering people to vote. Before anyone protesting the death of Freddie Gray registers themselves to vote, they should ask themselves one question. Why waste a vote?

Baltimore's current mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, was elected in 2010, receiving 87% percent of the vote. There are dictators, running unopposed, who would envy such a majority. What did the citizens of Baltimore get with the Honorable Rawlings-Blake?

Rawlings-Blake stated proudly that her administration "also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that." The word "inadvertently" would have been a good choice to preface her statement.

Rawlings-Blake allegedly ordered police to "stand down" on Monday night, when destructive people carved a swath through the city. Interesting that CNN ran an ad for CVS Pharmacy just now. CVS Pharmacy on Pennsylvania Avenue was destroyed by arson on Monday night. In a way, CVS Pharmacy is aiding and abetting the destruction of their own property, by sponsoring coverage that amplifies fear and anger.

There has been one Republican mayor of Baltimore in the last seventy years. He left office in 1967. The Democrat machine owns the city and the state. And the Democrat Party takes the black vote for granted. They don't care about education of black citizens. The teacher's union is just a jobs program.

The Great Society that gave us welfare and single motherhood owns Baltimore. How would a voter expect yet another Democrat to offer them opportunities. All Democrats offer is the soft bigotry of low expectations. The latest Democrat initiative is the push to import tens of millions of low-wage, low-skilled workers from Latin America, who will compete for jobs with black workers.

The protesters do have a point about policing. Freddie Gray had a long criminal history. Most of his arrests were drug-related. Someone like Rand Paul could make some inroads by talking about ending the War on Drugs.

I believe the War on Drugs is waged by an over-militarized police that uses deadly force, asset forfeiture and incarceration too much. There should be efforts within the culture to change attitudes about drug abuse. However, ignoring drug use is like ignoring graffiti or broken windows. It breeds more deviant behavior.

It's going to be a long hot summer. The racial tension that Eric Holder, Barack Obama, and Al Sharpton have stirred up to get out the black vote isn't so easy to defuse.