Category: Politics & Law

I hope that when I’m the most powerful person on the planet someone reminds me, “Hey, before you start ranting and raving about how the Jews are all muddle-heads out to legalize pot, or that ‘Meathead’ on All in the Family is obviously bisexual because he wears an ascot, you might want to turn off that tape recorder you had installed in here.”

(Via Boing Boing)

I don’t know what it is about Michael Moore that gets folks’ dander up. Actually, I do know, but regardless, I’m glad James Lileks is one of the bedandered.

The final report (if there is a God) was issued on the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons. The result?

We think they’re guilty as sin, but we really can’t prove it, so we can’t put them on trial, but, damn, they’re probably guilty of something, otherwise we wouldn’t have spent $70 million, right?

Oh, and we wish Bill would stop laughing and pointing at us. It’s really irritating.

‘Nuff said.

Traffic intersection cameras: freeing up police for more useful tasks, or Big Brother earning revenue for the city?

This article in the Monitor describes some of the debate. What I find annoying are some of the arguments against such cameras. For example, “critics say too many violations involve drivers who enter an intersection just tenths-of-a-second after the light has changed to red.” Well, duh. That’s what the yellow light is for. If you try to run the signal, then, yes, you’ve had your warning, and you deserve a ticket.

(And for “you” I also include “me.”)

“Opponents, such as the ACLU, also complain the cameras are one more step down the path to a ‘surveillance society.'” That’s irrelevant. We’ve already decided that entering intersections when the light is red is illegal. Is there a problem with enforcing that law? If we had a cop on every corner, issuing tickets for such violations, wouldn’t that be a “surveillance society,” too?

“Others worry that cities will become dependent on ticket revenue from the devices.” Ah. The Law of Unintended Consequences. Now there’s a worry. Maybe. Certainly there are worries when there are quotas issued to traffic cops, that they will bend the rules a bit in order to meet the quota. But can intersection cameras be tweaked for this? If they are producing photos as proof of the violation, that should be that, right? Can these photos be actually manipulated?

The argument is made that the yellow light period is manipulated.
traffic engineers laugh when they hear accusations of shorter yellow-light times. “They’re the only people who are allowed to set the yellow-light time in most places, not the police or the vendor running the camera program, and they traditionally follow national engineering standards. Their concern is safety,” says Leslie Blakey, coordinator of the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running.

Fact is, there is recourse at present to inappropriate signal timing, just as there is recourse to inappropriately low posted speed limits. These have been successfully challenged in court, because there are objective standards and reasonability tests that can be applied to such things. This works with “live cop” standards — it’s not clear why it would not work with cameras.

Going back to the cult of victimhood (ironic, given the speaker), “House majority leader Dick Armey has also called the cameras a hidden tax. Also of concern to Mr. Armey: The presumption of innocence is lost even if a driver ran a red-light unintentionally by misjudging a yellow light.” Um, a cop would still ticket such a “misjudgment.” And rightfully so — the point is that the person entered an intersection on red … which means that they could well have caused an accident, resulting in injury, crippling, and death. Yeah, maybe that misjudgment should have some consequences, even if the driver dodged the bullet (or, in this case, another car).

“‘”The way to correct red-light running is to go back and look at timing, maintenance, and other intersection design issues and correct those problems rather than just spending $50,000 a pop to put up cameras and issue citations to people,” says Mr. Baxter.'” Yeah, maybe. And maybe “the way” to correct bank robbery is to go back and look at child rearing and poverty and stress management and a whole raft of social ills and issues.

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t arrest and convict robbers. And it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do what we can to keep folks from entering intersections after the light has turned red. And if that means folks start slowing down earlier, or actually pay attention to the yellow … well, damn, I can’t think of any reason why we wouldn’t do that.

The Monitor has a link to the National Motorists Association page on red-light cameras, which they oppose. Again, looking at their opposition fails to move me.

The NMA states, “With properly posted speed limits and properly installed traffic-control devices, there is no need for camera-based traffic law enforcement devices.” Excuse me? The cameras seem to indicate otherwise. Unless the NMA is claiming that all traffic signals are too inconveniently timed for people to possibly obey them, this just makes no sense.

“Taking a reckless driver’s picture does not stop that incident of reckless driving,” they continue. True. But it’s not clear that cameras are being purchased at the expense of additional traffic police, so there seems to be little way to stop a given incident. And at least it provides some measure of accountability that may dissuade someone from a further incident — especially where points are levied against their license.

Only two arguments are made which seem to hold much water, and I’ll offer them up here for the sake of fairness.

First these camera systems do not always provide proof positive that the owner of the car (who gets a ticket from the system) is the actual driver. In such cases, as long as the law is as written, the ticket should not be issued, and if it is, it can be (and has been) challenged in court. Note, though, that this does not indict the use of red light cameras per se, but only how they are used. The same counter-argument can be made about (legitimate) concerns on how the tickets are issued — cases, for example, where the picture is not sent, but the accused has to go to a courthouse to view it, or where the citation is not sent through registered mail. These are “implementation issues,” and can and should be dealt with as such.

The second argument goes back to the money incentive. If a city has a poorly designed intersection, one that might cause accidents or have other problems, then the city, once it’s getting ticket revenue for the intersection, is disincented to actually fix the problem. The same is true today, of course, if an intersection is merely used as a “speed trap” or the like. But just because an intersection is poorly designed cannot be considered a justification for running it. Pushing for better, more efficient and effective traffic controls is a matter of democratic reform, of electing folks who will take action, of speaking up at public meetings.

But places where such public policy is not met should not prevent the use of such a tool, any more than the existence of speed traps in some communities should prevent the use of speed limits there.

That having been said, the NMA’s own “model law” guidelines on red-light cameras seem like a good set of guidelines on use of such devices.

In classical Roman culture, the wife was consider the head of the household’s honor. On one occasion, rumors circulated to Julius Caesar that a man had slipped into his house during the Bona Dea celebrations, which were for women only (even the husband could not attend). Even though the charges could not be proven, Caesar divorced his wife, noting that it wasn’t enough that there was no evidence — his wife must be beyond even reproach. If she conducted herself in such a fashion that folks would even entertain the idea of such charges, she was not doing her job as head of the household’s honor.

Over the weekend, VP Cheney was on the attack, claiming that the White House must stand on the principle of Executive Privilege and decline to identify what parts of the administration’s energy policy came from talks with which executives from Enron. His take on it was that to do so would damage the President’s ability (or his own) to have confidential meetings, and thus would inhibit individuals, firms, or organizations from being able to speak frankly with him.

Okay, there’s a certain measure of sense there, but …

The Enron case is not normal. Indeed, the whole relationship between the energy industry and the Bush Administration is not normal. And while there is a reasonable principle here for Cheney to keep mum on the subject, the idea that the American people therefore think the administration was in cahoots with Enron (or with Big Oil) means Cheney is failing the Caesar’s Wife test. He is not above seeming to be corrupt, or unduly influenced, or to have been discussing matters that the American public would not approve of. Regardless of whether any of that is true, that the public perceives it as possible should be of much greater concern to the White House, and should lead to at least some measure of waiver of Executive Privilege.

After all, based on the philosophy of the administration’s Attorney General, those who aren’t guilty have nothing to hide, right?

On that same note, I was more than a little irked that Cheney seemed so willing to play the War Card in this.

He suggested the GAO’s actions were overblown during wartime.

“After all of these years,” he said in the Fox interview, “can you imagine an FDR or Teddy Roosevelt, in the midst of a grave national crisis, dealing with the problems we’re having to deal with now, over here on the side as a matter of political expediency, trading away a very important fundamental principle of the presidency?”

In other words, “Don’t bother us, don’t question us, don’t debate over any aspect of administration policy, regardless of whether it has to do with Afghanistan or Terrorism or not, because, dagnabbit, we’re at war.”

Would that have been a reasonable card for Nixon to play during Watergate? Or Clinton during our involvement in Bosnia? I suspect not, and it’s not clear that this is any more of a distraction than it should be, nor that disclosure here would weaken the war effort, or give aid and comfort to terrorists.

Is it necessarily fair that the administration be tarred with the brush of failed Enron? Maybe, maybe not, though that old adage about lying down with dogs seems to apply. But that it is being so tarred should not be met by actions that further encourage accusations of stonewalling or collusion. The White House should be going out of its way to demonstrate that Enron got no special treatment, that Enron’s advice on energy policy was treated as simply another input, and that everything in the Enron/White House relationship was on the up-and-up.

Otherwise, the administration might find itself playing Caesar’s wife in more than one sense.

Early indications are that the GOP will quite explicitly use the War on Terrorism as a campaign issue in its favor, playing on the high approval ratings for the President as a tool to take back control of Senate.

“We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America,” Karl Rove said at the Republican National Committee meeting here.

This stands in contrast to Dubya’s previous portrayal of bipartisan unity in the face of terror.

Of course, if the GOP wants to play that game, I’m sure the Dems can find plenty of grist for the mill. After all, bin Laden and Mullah Omar are both still at large. We’ve broken the Taliban in Afghanistan, but it’s doubtful the laurels for that will still be restful come November, which means that further action will need to be taken.

And, of course, if so, then the GOP leadership runs the risk of blowing everything by turning the war into a partisan issue. Which, ultimately, is a pretty despicable thing to do. And I came up with that adjective before I read it in the story.

If they were smart, they’d just stay quiet about it. If it’s that great a partisan win for them, then the voters will respond. If not, then trying to hype it as such can only cause more of a mess.

In his luncheon speech, Rove contended that Bush’s bipartisan strategy on such issues as education reform has, in fact, proved to be a partisan bonanza for the GOP. “I’m glad the Democrats worked with us [on education], but, you know what, the Republicans will get the credit,” Rove said. He cited Gallup polls showing that the GOP had “succeeded in wiping out a 51-year disadvantage on this issue.”

Hey, and you know, that’s a great way to encourage the Democrats to cooperate and actually frickin’ get something done in Washington — by then turning it back on them as a political gambit, by forcibly trying to portray any cooperation as a win for the GOP.

There’s already way too much of that sort of strategizing that goes on in back rooms in DC … we really don’t need any more.

Not that I’d expect anything better from Karl Rove.

(Via Cursor.org)

Sic transit gloria Mile High Stadium.