Two Wise Men Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I have enlisted the help of two friends who, unlike myself, actually understand web design, building, operation and maintenance. One is a web professional in northern Virginia, the other an engineer and attorney who is in an IT graduate program in Maryland. They are not web contractors to Crablaw but have been given "keys to the engine" for sandbox experimentation at their absolute leisure and discretion. Both have offered me wise counsel in the past on site issues.

I remain grateful for any assistance that they can provide in making this site a better, user-friendlier site.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Housekeeping Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

1. Many thanks to Craig Harman of Once and Future Craig (see links "My People") - Craig once again provided professional help to my amateur web managenment skills, curing a layout snag that had tortured me (and perhaps you?) for days.

2. I am considering taking on additional commentators on a short or long term basis. Our readers are not many in number but I want this site to be a worthwhile read. Please email me if you are interested in taking part and getting your ideas and concerns published here.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Right-Wingers Against Bush Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

It is not surprising when liberals and libertarians criticize George Bush harshly; in a free republic based on broadly democratic principles, that's what political opponents do. They don't wiretap their opponents (well, usually not), they don't engage in violence; what they/we do is to criticize/slam/humuliate their opponents in a free press or in public discussions as protected by, ultimately, the Bill of Rights and analogous state constitutional provisions.

What is surprising is when conservatives slam a sitting president who enjoys a clear majority in both houses of Congress.

Think Progress has a succinct blurb from Federalist Society board member Robert Levy highlighting the express criminality of electronic surveillance done except as authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. To quote that act:

“A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally engages in electronic surveillance … except as authorized by statute.” (FISA sec. 1809)

The Think Progress blog goes on to identify other conservative critics of Bush's policy of repeated warrantless wiretapping of American citizens including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), columnist George Will and conservative attorney, activist and columnist Bruce Fein. It also identifies Senate Judiciary Committee chariman Arlen Specter (R-PA) as a "conservative" opponent of Bush's warrantless wiretaps; while Specter is a critic of Bush in this regard, his credentials as a conservative are not exactly impeccable.

While the Think Progress piece was pretty good, a lengthier piece would have included references to conservative stalwart and Clinton impeachment driver former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) and Bush supporter turned blistering Bush and Cheney critic Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) on the issue of unwarranted wiretapping.

Bush earned another public "calling out" by a military scholar for the conservative American Enterprise Institute. few in the media noticed the reordering of the Doomsday Presidential Line of Succession to raise civilian (i.e. political) Pentagon Undersecretary for Intelligence and the deputy Secretary of Defense above the Chiefs of Staff for the Army and other services. But Thomas Donnelly did, noting how Bush's approach "... continues to devalue the services as institutions."

Anecdotally, I am aware of two conservatives who are disgusted with George Bush. One is a quite conservative former Army Reserve officer and Maryland prosecutor who hates Democrats and taxes with a passion; the other is a fairly conservative religiously active father and self-employed insurance agent in Virginia. Both have gone out of their ways to express the depth of their disgust with George Bush on a number of issues including reckless deficit spending, general incompetence and repeated lying to the people of the United States.

It may well be the conservatives like the foregoing - conservatives who, unlike Bush, have a political future to feed and water or an ideological commitment to conservative ideas - who bring the Bush era to a bloody end. Conservatives are reading the writing on the walls. At least 30 Democratic veterans - including veterans of Iraq War II - are challenging House Republicans including Maryland's Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R- MD 6). Team Bush will not have the ability or the inclination to attempt a "Swift Boat"-style attack against all of them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is, to the surprise of many, functioning very well in candidate recruitment and out-performing modest fundraising expectations, while the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has actually been outraising the GOP Senate Committee led by Liddy Dole. (Read the last link carefully to see how the GOP Congressional Committee "damns" Dole's Senate committee with passive-aggressive "faint praise.")

Bush may not have experienced the traditional presidential experience of a mid-term bloody nose in 2002, but his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill probably have some reason to worry. The Jack Abramoff scandal may cause continuing damage and render multiple GOP incumbents vulnerable to embarrassment and/or prison. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) just pled guilty to taking Carl Sagan-esque "millions and millions" of dollars of bribes. and his seat is facing a Democratic Oh, yes, I almost forgot - the House GOP Whip and de facto Speaker of the House Tom DeLay (sorry Congressman Hastert) is under indictment and will be either dragged through the mud bloodied badly or convicted of electional law violations in the next several months. Plus Bush has conceded that it is time to start removing troops from Iraq, conceding in practice if not theory Marine veteran Jack Murtha's (D-PA) basic point, so the GOP cannot really use the issue of troop removal as a "stick" against the Dems. Most of all, there no 9/11 aftermath/shellshock/rally and no First Lady Teresa Heinz Kerry w/ martini glass to cover Bush's warts. Some of these Republicans may envision a moving van in their futures.

No wonder the left-wing bloggers are in such a good mood these days, and no wonder that the GOP has started eating its own.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Nice Prank - No Jobs Here Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Someone - someone familiar with both my small website and the legal placement/advertising agencies used by job-seeking lawyers - apparently created a false advertisement online with a fee-based law job search company for employment with this website/firm, listing info@crablaw.com as an email contact address for me. For the record, while the owner of this site is an attorney and does practice law actively in DC and MD, he is not hiring anyone. People who want to reach me can reach me at thecrab@crablaw.com. This ad is either a typo or a prank, and the agency is in the process of removing it.

There is no firm and there is no job, just a working stiff lawyer with a part-time website trying to feed his children, with no need for staff attorneys or associates. You are better off trying to get your imaginary friend to hire you and pay you a salary; she/he has more cash than I do after taxes and household expenses.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Comment Policy Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

We published a comment policy some time ago, and I will reiterate it here in full later today with a major modification. Previously, comments threatening illegal activity were banned and still are, but the reasoning is changed. While I don't have time to deal with DHS hacks like those who busted the history student noted below, I refuse to live in fear of them.

The reason that illegal threats are banned is that I want nothing to do with illegality. The President of the United States has shown a cavalier attitude to the rule of law in his orders on NSA domestic spying without warrants and in his DHS dept. conduct against academic use of academic books. I intend to uphold the rule of law here so provide him a good example in case he is a reader (quite unlikely) and in case none of his non-indicted Republican friends and staffers can do so. Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the US as the supreme law of the land, and I have taken two such oaths in MD and DC as an attorney and intend to uphold both here.

The no profanity rule still applies here, keep it clean for the kids, they can learn vulgarities on the playground if they need to.

UPDATE: Here is the comment policy:

1. Please comment more or less on the topic. If you want to comment on something else email me and I will consider (strongly) making a new post to which your comment would be germane.
2. No profanity. Don't talk about manure or copulation unless you mean manure or copulation. Kids are not our primary audience here but I want it to be okay for a 6th grade kids if one ever drops by.
3. If you make me look foolish for something foolish I have said, I will try to be humble and congratulate you. More broadly, this site is better when readers make a good challenge to posts, i.e. this is not a dittohead environment but a discussion among serious minded people about things that, presumably, matter.
4. No threats or promises of illegal conduct. While I don't want to talk to the country's police, blue or white collar, the real reason is that good citizens obey the law except in extreme situations (e.g. civil disobedience, actions to save a life, etc.)
5. I promise not to be extremely constipated about any rule except 4.

Thanks.

-- Bruce Godfrey

1-800-Eat-Crow Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Below is the original text of my comments about a story of DHS pressure upon a student for borrowing Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" from a university library for a paper.

The story was a FRAUD by that student, i.e. it DID NOT HAPPEN. I hereby apologize to the Honorable Michael Chertoff, Director of Homeland Security, for repeating in Crablaw what turned out to be a slander against his department. The story was published by Massachusetts local newspapers as was a subsequent report of the fraud.

Had the story been true, I would stand by the entirety of my comments below, i.e. I believe that outrage is appropriate against any government that would do what this student claimed. The government did not do it. This student committed a fraud upon his professors, his university and upon the people of the United States.

I continue to have severe reservations about the respect of the Bush Administration for the civil liberties of the people of the United States in light of admissions by the President of repeated, warrantless NSA wiretaps of American citizens in direct violation of the United States Code. I have not blogged on that topic and will do so when I have the chance to get my facts quadruple checked. But the Bush Administration did not nail a University of Massachusetts student for borrowing Mao; it DID NOT HAPPEN, and the whole matter was apparently the result of fraud by the alleged student.

This episode points out the distinction between journalism and commentary. I/Crablaw am not a journalist, but a commentator. I do not have the desire nor the skills or resources to engage in journalistic fact-checking. Frankly, I don't have the money to spend or available business hours to play at reporting, and so I leave that to the "day job" reporters in newspapers and online. Some commentators, notably Talking Points Memo, engage in excellent commentary and excellent reporting, but most cannot do both or necessarily either well. Since I have a 40-50 hour a week day job unrelated to blogging, and a 3.5 hour round trip, and two kids in diapers, I question my ability to do what I do well also.

I note finally that I hope that the defrauder suffers hard for this action, as he has damaged the entire nation through his actions.

Below the evidence of my gullibility and that of a multitude of print and online media.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Government agents have investigated a college student for borrowing Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" as an academic reference for a paper on, ironically enough, totalitarian governments, going so far as to visit his parents' home to interview this young student.

The justification for this unconstitutional harassment of a reader of lawful, classic historical document of Chinese Communism was that someone in DHS had decided to put the book on a "watch list." I guess that decision was justified because Osama bin Laden is such a terrible Chinese Communist. Several thousand undergrad and graduate students of Chinese history around the U.S., who may have the book (go ahead, buy it from the Amazon link, if you dare) on their shelves or in their academic carrels, should clean their dorm rooms and have their parents clean their living rooms, since company is coming and coming armed. So should the academic advisers, professors and teaching assistants who had the nerve to mention the book by name in syllabuses. So should the department chairs and the university presidents. Oh heck, find the schools' football mascots and interrogate them too.

What's next? You get DHS and the FBI armed in your living room because of your (or your daughter's) use of library borrowing privileges? Guess you better limit your reading habits a bit, perhaps stick to books about Tex-Mex cooking and baseball, subjects that enjoy the full approval of the current President of the United States.

As a matter of fact, the fact that you are reading this blog could, by extension, put you in jeopardy. Maybe you should sell your computer. Better yet, maybe you should disassemble your computer, with an axe.

Just 45 minutes before hearing this story, I borrowed a book from the Baltimore County Public Library regarding progressive/liberal activism from the Wellstone Foundation. I was not a complete fan of the late Senator Paul Wellstone or his far-left economics, but respected his character and willingness to take a political punch on principle. I suppose that that book could be used to mark me as a subversive in need of careful watching. Of course, that book will be put to VERY good use and I just wish I had borrowed five more such books. My schedule does not permit me to engage in the proper stoking of this little blog, let alone any public activism, but I am fired up and angry now, angrier than I have been about any political issue in many years. I guess I am just going to have to buy some No-Doz.

For those who did or did not sleep through Constitutional Law in law school, let's review the actual "black-letter" text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The core function of the First Amendment speech, press, assembly and redress clauses is to keep current or future elected governments from using government power to punish, deter or restrain political discussion, political organizing and political activity. This DHS action against a college student borrowing the Little Red Book makes clear that DHS is about being a book police, not about uprooting Islamic terrorists.

In fairness, sometimes content-based restrictions may be good and proper. I do not think that one should be able to disclose private information publicly (e.g. PIN numbers, combination lock codes) or certain REAL national security matters like troop tactics in war or bona fide classified material. These are legitimate, narrow exceptions to the general rule that the government in the U.S. does NOT get to pick and choose your reading list for you. particularly on matters of public policy. Communism was and is murderous, sick, and miserable, but part of what makes it so is the total lack of individual privacy and the total lack of a free press.

The fact that no one in DHS blocked this book from the watch list should tell all of us that our college syllabuses, our library cards and even our credit cards are not safe. For example, I have both borrowed and bought books by Aaron McGruder, the creator/author/artist of The Boondocks. McGruder is bitterly anti-George Bush, very left of center. I know he could get a DHS visit, though they might think better of it. Could I?

My most radical libertarian friends have warned me about abuses of power in strident terms for years, and I have questioned their "excessive rhetoric" in the past, but no longer. If borrowing a a copy of a widely-known historical document to write a history paper in college gets you FEDERAL agents in your parents' living room, we are not the United States of America. I fear that we may have become some other country transplanted onto the topsoil of the former United States of America. As Michael Moore said it best in the title of one of his books: "Dude, Where's My Country?"

If you are a Bush supporter, consider that eventually George Bush will be promoted to "Two-Term Ex-President." Fast forward to 2008, when Hillary Clinton beats, say, Bill Frist by 17 electoral college votes and becomes president of the United States. Maybe your fervent, orthodox religion, your staunch beliefs about gun rights or your outspoken view of abortion as homicide will lead you to be associated with a terrorist like Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph. Maybe instead of meeting you at your parents' house, DHS will meet you outside of church or at your job. Maybe your reading list for the past two years will come up in the discussions, and you will be asked to identify acquaintances, co-workers and friends, without your lawyer present.

Now, what do you think?

-- Bruce Godfrey

The Sun Gets It Right about Baltimore's Transit Woes Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Jacques Kelly hits it on the head in the Saturday, Dec 10 Baltimore Sun about the sad state of transit in Baltimore. In an essay focused on bus transit, he touches on a number of peculiarities of the Baltimore MTA, including the odd legacy of numbering and routing bus routes largely after the streetcar patterns of the 1960s. I won't repeat the whole essay here but it is worth a read for those who love city love and hate to see it decay.

Kelly does note that cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and New York - cities enjoyed for their urban merits by a large number of locals and visitors alike - have user-friendly, frequent and attractive transit systems including buses. Kelly described the mechanical failures of a 1989-vintage bus on a recent ride, i.e. a bus well past its mechanical useful life.

The following is my extensive indictment of the Baltimore transit "system."

1. The Metro does not connect to any non-local bus transportation mode directly. Not to the MARC, not to Amtrak and not to light rail, not to Greyhound and not to an airport.

2. The light rail does connect - poorly - to AMTRAK/MARC at Penn Station and to BWI and somewhat better to Camden Yards. The problem at Penn Station is that someone from the north cannot connect directly to Penn Station, but must wait in the rain at the University of Baltimore station for a one-stop northbound train that comes about every 36 minutes in rush hour - or walk 5 blocks. The problem for people south of downtown is that someone who is catching a MARC train to DC does not want to plug north through downtown traffic on a red-light hitting northbound trolley to catch a southbound fast train. Instead, they will drive to West Baltimore or Halethorpe and park for free, because time for a long-distance commuter is money. As for Camden Station, I suppose it is OK if you are actually going to a game, but taking a slow train north to catch a slow train south is madness.

3. The buses are slow, are inconvenient for rapid boarding and alighting and must push through Baltimore's slow, dull traffic grid.

4. The light rail and metro both avoid the most interesting tourist and entertainment centers except for Camden Yards and Lexington Market. They do not connect well with Harborplace, Little Italy, Fells Point, Canton, Federal Hill, Hampden, the Baltimore Zoo, Charles Village or Highlandtown. While one can walk to Harborplace from the Metro, it does not take tourists to that destination. If a tourist is not already staying within walking distance of the Inner Harbor, the metro will not shorten the trip because there are no hotels at Mondawmin Mall or at Upton/Lafayette Market, and never will be. Ditto for Lexington Market; a tourist trip there is not likely to be faciliated by the Metro or especially the light rail for a tourist.

5. There are exactly two rail stops in the entire system east of Charles Center - Market Place, walking distance from Charles Center, and the station at Johns Hopkins Hospital. It is conceivable that an out of town visitor will go to JHH from the downtown hotel base, but we don't typically hope for lots of sickness and lots of visiting relatives as a mark of urban success.

6. For residents, the service has been very limited. Unless you live in the Reisterstown Road corridor, the metro is almost useless. The light rail is slow and skips or misses stops in odd places. For example, the line passes through Ruxton and near Towson, but stops in neither. On the south end, it approaches Glen Burnie but does not stop at any interesting North Arundel destination (e.g. the courthouse, North Arundel Hospital, Marley Station Mall, etc.) The branch that goes to the airport does make an OK connection with the airport itself, but service is infrequent and the light rail does not connect with the Amtrak/MARC station at BWI, an unfortunate design weakness.

7. The city fathers and mothers have spent dearly to promote Baltimore as a tourist destination. Camden Yards and the almight hotel which this column has discussed are two examples. A city that does not provide the means for residents and visitors to get from place to place is essentially saying, "Stay Home!" whether home is in Dundalk or in New Jersey. Baltimore has one of the nation's lowest rates of dining-out per capita among medium-sized and large cities; perhaps it is part and parcel.

8. A brief trip to New York, Philadelphia or Washington will make the transit shortcomings of Baltimore painfully apparent. The DC Metro Red Line trains move through Union Station about one every 90 seconds at the height of rush hour; Baltimore's light rail service is 54 times less frequent out of Penn Station. At Union Station, the rail station has a large upscale mall with an large bookstore and magazine rack; no such bookstore in the central rail station of the City That Reads. Almost 700,000 people enter the DC metro daily; fewer than 85,000 enter the Baltimore metro and light rail combined each day. Baltimore is not that much smaller than DC.

9. When people in DC, Philadelphia and New York view transit, they view it as a useful means to get to a useful place to do interesting things. When many Baltimoreans consider mass transit, they view it as a sewage pipe piping Baltimore's social decay into their driveway. Tensions regarding race, class, economic status and the overpowering, mind-numbing crime statistics lead this hostility to transit. If you tried to take the DC Metro away from wealthy residents of Rockville or Falls Church or Alexandria, you would have a riot, but Baltimore's public hostility to transit has left us in the dust.

There is a plan to build a 100-odd station system in Baltimore over the next 40 years. Perhaps someone will wheel me and my oxygen tank onto the system when it is completed, if ever.

-- Bruce Godfrey

Back to Business Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The Crab has encountered a number of procedural inconveniences of late.

One is the ongoing lingering medical malady known as "crud in my chest" which won't quit. I typically get it this time of year and it lingers, creeping from my nose to my throat to my lungs. I have also caught something called "adenopathy" near my ear/neck which is apprently when a lymph node/duct/whatever gets inflamed and puffs out hard, hot and painful. I am taking antibiotics because I cannot fit meningitits into my busy schedule. The foregoing have sapped a lot of my "free time" in doctor visits, exhaustion and sleep shortage.

Last week was a bear at work due to a heavy deadline, 50 week plus 4hour round-trip commute. On the other hand, I am earning DC money with a Reisterstown mortgage so I suppose I cannot complain.

Family scheduling pressures have been great lately. In addition, "Pookie" aka Sam Godfrey, age 2.5, tore the many of the keys off my laptop, resulting in a new keyboard and installation charge and a trip by Dada to Target to get 6 new child-proof door knob covers. I have been avoiding the basement "cave" to spend limited time with wife and kids, and frankly because it's cold down here.

Back to business.

-- Bruce Godfrey

The Execution of Wesley Baker Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The State of Maryland killed Wesley Baker today after many years of appeals and despite last-minute pleas from religious leaders, politicians and community activists including the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore.

My fellow liberals and libertarians are troubled by the death penalty, and so am I. I fear that the death penalty is one more poorly-run government program, that it deters few murders and that we will eventually execute a non-murderer. Some reports strongly suggest that an innocent, developmentally-delayed teenager in Texas may have been executed some years ago. I lack confidence in our ability to conduct death penalty cases safely.

That said, the evidence of Baker's guilt and the nature of his crime - executing a grandmother in front of her grandchildren during a Woodlawn robbery - call for vengeance if anything does.

Some have argued that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to black murderers of white victims. In Maryland, crimes must be prosecuted in the county where the crime occurred. A victim is mostly likely to be killed in her of his home county, and most whites live in politically moderate or conservative, majority-white counties. Put simply, most whites live where mostly whites live, and most white murder victims get killed in tough-on-crime counties.

Accordingly, the jury pool and electorate of the county government in predominately white areas may be more pro law enforcement and pro death penalty. Elected officials from Sheriff to County Executive to State's Attorney in Baltimore County, for example, are safe to support the death penalty and do so relatively vigorously. The Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office in contrast is averse to the death penalty; most crime victims including homicide victims in majority-black Baltimore City are black, and Baltimore City leads the state by far in annual murders. So if Baltimore City, the state's most predominantly black jurisdiction and the jurisdiction with the highest murder rate, is hostile to the death penalty, some racial disparities appear.

If a white robber had killed a black grandmother in front of her grandchildren, he would have probably stood a good chance to face execution.

What we do know is that the State of Maryland killed Wesley Baker today.

-- Bruce Godfrey