By Brendan Loy

TPM’s David Kurtz suggests a new “Cash for Clunkers” plan: “How about a program where we can turn in the old, washed-up pundits and talking heads on the cable nets for ones that spew less dangerous emissions?”

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Gotta love Drudge: a story headlined “W.H. makes CEOs pay for lunch” becomes “OBAMA CHARGES WHITE HOUSE VISITORS FOR MEALS…”

By Brendan Loy

I’m in Steamboat Springs for the weekend, at a legal education conference thingy. The drive up here was, as you’d expect, gorgeous. I captured a bit of it by putting my digital camera on the dashboard and just letting it sit there, and shoot video, while I drove. The result turned out pretty well, I think.

The “soundtrack” is provided by my iPod, hooked into my car stereo and playing songs in shuffle mode. Here’s a clip of an extremely curvy stretch of Route 40, with Shooter Jennings’s “4th of July” playing in the background:

And here’s one from a bit later, on less curvy (but still very beautiful) terrain, with Makem & Clancy’s “The Ballad of St. Anne’s Reel” playing:

The iPod selected strikingly appropriate songs several times during the course of my drive. The very first song it picked was the “Indiana Jones” theme, which has been my “adventure” theme since I was a little kid. Later, during a particularly difficult stretch of mountain driving, it picked the theme from “Rudy,” as if to encourage me in my endeavours. And it started playing “Folsom Prison Blues” just as I rounded a bend and saw a train chugging past. Johnny Cash was literally singing the words “I hear the train a comin’, it’s rollin’ down the bend” when I first spotted the train.

So basically, my iPod is beginning to show signs of artificial intelligence… :)

By Brendan Loy

Becky posed an interesting question to me the other day, and I thought I’d pose it to all of you: What do you think will be the big MSM news story of August, when Congress is in recess? August is traditionally the peak of the summer news lull, a time when stories like shark attacks and Gary Condit/Chandra Levy can come to dominate the news landscape, simply because there’s nothing else to talk about. And, particularly with hurricane season looking pretty tame, this August seems likely to be quite uneventful, which means the MSM will have to find something to obsess about.

So… what will it be this year? Will Gates-gate continue to simmer, long outliving its natural shelf life? Will the “birthers” keep growing in prominence? Will a crescendo of PANIC!!!!! about a resurgence of swine flu take over the media? Will some heretofore unknown scandal explode? Will the media spend the month doing detailed, rational, fact-based, accurate, analytical reporting on the pros and cons of health care reform? (Hahahahaha.) Will Michael Jackson rise up from the grave, heralding the beginning of the zombie war?

By Brendan Loy

I don’t mean to obsess over this stupid Cambridge case, which is really not all that important in the grand scheme of things. There are far worse examples of police misconduct; this one is a prominent story mainly because of a question asked at a presidential press conference, and because we’re in the midst of the annual midsummer news lull.

However, it is serving as a “teachable moment,” or at least a clarifying one, in terms of the reactions it has generated. And that’s the reason I’m borderline obsessed with it: not because of how I feel about Gates or Crowley or this case specifically, but because the ignorant, authoritarian, anti-constitutional attitudes being commonly expressed, here and elsewhere, really piss me off.

And so, for the edification of those who continue to misunderstand (or disregard) the nature of our constitutional republic, because they think citizens’ free-speech rights pose an inconvenience to law enforcement, I offer this analysis by Harvey A. Silverglate, co-founder of FIRE (an organization beloved by conservatives) and author of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. Whereas many conservatives apparently feel more threatened by infringements on their liberties imposed by university bureaucrats with pens than those imposed by police officers with guns, Silverglate rightly feels threatened by both. And so, he writes:

[E]veryone should take a step back and ask why so many citizens–including Professor Gates, who, it is conceded, did not assault Officer Crowley–end up being arrested for uttering mere words. Because, whether the words were as perfunctory and non-objectionable as Gates’ claim that he asked for Crowley’s name and badge number, or as heated as Crowley’s claim that Gates let loose a stream of loud and offensive insults, they were, well, just words. Put more simply, why do we as a society so often ignore traditional notions of First Amendment freedom to speak one’s own notion of truth to power when one party to the confrontation is wearing a uniform, a badge and a gun?

Some of the media commentary is quite remarkable, replete with claims that Crowley had a right to arrest Gates because the professor was loud and offensive. Yet what has happened to the notion that under the First Amendment, loudness is OK as long as one is not waking up neighbors in the middle of the night (known as “disturbing the peace”), and offensiveness is fully protected as long as it stops short of what the Supreme Court has dubbed “fighting words”?

This gets us to the heart of the matter. Under well-established First Amendment jurisprudence, what Gates said to Crowley–even assuming the worst–is fully constitutionally protected. After all, even “offensive” speech is covered by the First Amendment’s very broad umbrella. …

Today, the law recognizes only four exceptions to the First Amendment’s protection for free speech: (1) speech posing the “clear and present danger” of imminent violence or lawless action posited by [Justice Oliver Wendell] Holmes, (2) disclosures threatening “national security,” (3) “obscenity” and (4) so-called “fighting words” that would provoke a reasonable person to an imminent, violent response.

Silverglate then proceeds to explain, in detail, why the “fighting words” doctrine clearly does not apply to this case. Read the whole thing. He concludes:

There is a serious problem in this country: Police are overly sensitive to insults from those they confront. And one can hardly blame the confronted citizen, especially if the citizen is doing nothing wrong when confronted by official power. This is, after all, a free country, and if “free” means anything meaningful, it means being left alone–especially in one’s own home–when one is not breaking the law.

Sgt. Crowley had every right to check on what was reported as a possible break and entry. But as soon as he realized that the occupant was entitled to be in the house, he should have left. He admits in his own police report that he was indeed able to ascertain Professor Gates’ residency and hence right to be in the house.

As for Professor Gates’ inquiries into the officer’s identity and badge number (as Gates describes the confrontation) or his tirade against the officer (as Crowley reports), the citizen was merely–even if neither kindly nor wisely–exercising his constitutional right when faced with official power. Even if Professor Gates were wearing a “F*** You, Cambridge Police” jacket, the officer would have been obligated to leave the house without its occupant in handcuffs.

Crucially, none of this is disputable. That Professor Gates’s arrest was illegal and unconstitutional is a simple and undeniable fact, arising out of long-settled precedents and principles of constitutional law. If a Massachusetts statute counsels a different result — and I don’t believe it does — then that statute would itself be plainly unconstitutional, at least as applied to this case. Simply put, there is no possible legal justification for Gates’s arrest. So then, what are we arguing about, exactly? Just because the conservative authoritarians among us might think that the Constitution should give Officer Crowley the right to arrest Professor Gates, doesn’t mean it actually does. When Gahrie and Andrew, et al, are appointed to the United States Supreme Court, maybe they can change the law of the land. Until then, however, what Officer Crowley did was illegal, and what Professor Gates did, wasn’t. Period. The End.

By Brendan Loy

No, not like that, you sickos. Here’s Captain Kirk himself, on the Tonight Show, reading a verbatim excerpt from ex-Governor Palin’s farewell address the way it was intended to be read — as poetry:

(Hat tip: B. Minich.)

P.S. Shatner is short!

By Brendan Loy

I am in the progress of switching servers from WestHost — which has served me well over the years, but now, alas, just cannot seem to handle the load caused by my WordPress blogs — to the WordPress-recommended site BlueHost. We’ll see how it goes.

In the mean time, there will undoubtedly be some technical hiccups as the switch happens. You’re already viewing the blog on its new server, but some of the back-end changes are still in progress. Let me know — in comments, or via e-mail: irishtrojan [at] gmail.com — if you have any problems.

Also note: for a while, you’ll be redirected from www.brendanloy.com to www.lrtimes.com when you access my site. This is temporary; www.brendanloy.com will remain the primary domain going forward. No need to change your bookmarks.

You’ll know the DNS switch is complete when you see this banner atop the page…

…instead of this banner:

(That’s not necessarily a permanent change, but it’s a useful way for me to keep track of the domain/server switch.)

By Brendan Loy

Here’s a photo I took yesterday of crepuscular rays over Denver, shortly before sunrise:

And, later in the day, a pair of video screen-grabs (a split second apart) of a single lightning bolt striking two spots south of downtown:

It has been an exceptionally stormy summer so far in Denver, for which I blame El Niño, global warming, Canada, and Barack Obama. (Actually just one of those. Guess which. Hint: weather, not climate.)

By Brendan Loy

I was delighted yesterday to see Glenn Reynolds linking to libertarian writer Radley Balko’s Reason article about the Cambridge kerfuffle (a.k.a. Gates-gate).

Balko shifts the focus away from race, which is really a sideshow in this particular case, to where it rightfully belongs: police abuse of power. And, while acknowledging that Gates seems to have acted boorishly, Balko criticizes Crowley for arresting him when, by all accounts, the only “crime” Gates committed is the non-crime of “contempt of cop.”

Balko also lambastes many conservatives for the “instinctively authoritarian tack” they have taken in response to this and other confrontations between cops and citizens. This is something that desperately needed to be said, and Balko says it well.

Excerpt:

[I]t now seems clear that Gates mistakenly presumed that Crowley had racially profiled him, and hurled a barrage of invective at Crowley in response. … [But] [t]he conversation we ought to be having in response to the July 16 incident and its heated aftermath isn’t about race, it’s about police arrest powers, and the right to criticize armed agents of the government.

By any account of what happened—Gates’, Crowleys’, or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. “Contempt of cop,” as it’s sometimes called, isn’t a crime. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The “disorderly conduct” charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.

He won’t be, of course. And that’s ultimately the scandal that will endure long after the political furor dies down. The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It’s taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights. …

If there’s a teachable moment to extract from Gates’ arrest, it’s that arrest powers should be limited to actual crimes. Instead, the emerging lesson seems to be that you should capitulate to police, all the time, right or wrong. That’s unfortunate, because there are plenty of instances where you shouldn’t.

Much more after the jump, including some well-deserved link love for Carlos Miller’s blog.

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