Finally, Somebody Else Taking a Stand...

Recently I wrote how glad I was people involved with the internet were standing up against the federal government's ill-advised Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Now another entity -- the Catholic Church -- is showing some backbone.

I'm told Catholic bishops have addressed all U. S. parishes regarding the federal government's demand that Catholic hospitals and other agencies fund abortion and contraceptives in their health care policies.

The new federal policy begins in a year; Catholics have twelve months to get their consciences in order.

The bishops say no.

Good for them.

Whatever one believes about abortion or contraception is not as relevant to this issue as is the question of conscience. Beginning with the First Amendment, we as a nation have respected conscience.

Over time, we made exemptions for people like the Amish regarding school attendance and military service; indeed, in the era of the military draft we allowed for alternative service for conscientous objectors.

Conscience, we knew, was sacred. It was a major component of the essence of the individual.

Respecting it has been basic to being American.

Even in the secular realm, we have respected conscience. Advertising agency executives, for instance, could decline to work on a specific account -- for tobacco, for instance, or a specific politician -- if they could not do so in good conscience. Of course, abstain from too many accounts and an executive would be invited to work elsewhere. But at least there has been a provision for respecting that person's conscience.

In journalism, reporters writing stories could, for whatever reason (maybe they opposed how their story had been edited), ask that their bylines be omitted from the story. In other words, they would do their job, but not sign their names to it.

Conscience.

It is important.

But now we're told the Catholic Church must adjust its beliefs to fit the ideas of Those Who Know Best.

And they're saying no.

Good.

I'm with them on this.

For conscience' sake.

SOPA -- Just Say No.

In 1980 Alvin Toffler in his classic book The Third Wave predicted that the coming digital age would radically alter the world as did the industrial revolution. While Toffler at the time did not know the word “internet,” he predicted with amazing accuracy how networked computers would change our lives by the year 2000.

That digital change has smashed the business models of travel agencies, movie studios, record producers, the post office, newspapers, photography (imagine, Kodak bankrupt), and telecommunications. Despite the technical progress, legal concepts of intellectual property now lag. They are in an era of big media corporations used to being protected by barriers to entry like locomotive-sized printing presses, broadcast towers reaching a third of a mile into the sky, multimillion dollar production equipment, and century old concepts of distribution systems.

But it’s all changing.

Rapidly.

Now a 14-year-old in his bedroom can operate an electronic newspaper, a television and radio station, an editing suite for his garage band or movie production, and a retailing company. Or he can run it all out of his backpack or back pocket -- even Toffler failed to foresee tablets and smart phones (neither did Star Trek, for that matter).

But the legacy media are fighting back.

Threatened by cheap technology and the obsolescence of a distribution system going back to the sales of sheet music, record labels launched lawsuits on their customers. People just want to steal our product, they cried. Not entirely true, as Steve Jobs demonstrated with iTunes, which had seven-figure sales its very first week. Jobs knew most people are willing to pay for a product when it is marketed using contemporary technology.

Then there was the notorious Righthaven, a Las Vegas law firm that would sue individuals posting online articles from Righthaven’s client newspapers. No warning, no takedown notice, just a lawsuit for $75,000 and perhaps confiscation of your domain name. And then Righthaven would be willing to settle for a few thousand dollars. Righthaven’s founder bragged that it was a great business plan – go to court or settle, he couldn’t lose. But he did when a federal court revealed Righthaven was in a partnership with a newspaper publisher and was not entitled to file copyright suits. But perhaps Righthaven is an extreme case – it was not about copyright protection; it was about legal extortion or what Wired magazine called “copyright trolling.”

Which brings us to something more ominous than a rogue law firm or tone deaf record companies (no pun intended) suing the customers -- the proposed federal Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and companion Protect IP Act (PIPA). The basic thrust of SOPA is that internet providers like Google or YouTube will become civilly or criminally liable for posting material that violates copyright.

Copyright protection is important. And copyright holders should have the right to go after those infringing upon those copyrights. No argument there. But holding internet providers liable will destroy the basic function of the internet – free exchange of information. With the millions of pieces of information moving around the net, there is no way internet service providers can police it all for copyright infringement.

Internet service providers, like transportation companies and utilities, are common carriers. They are open to all who desire their services and they cannot be held liable for unknowingly allowing criminal activity to flourish through their services.

For example, if an escaping convict buys a bus ticket, the bus company – if it does not know the person is an escapee -- must provide transportation. It cannot be held liable for aiding in an escape. It would be ludicrous for the bus company to do criminal background checks on every passenger wanting to ride (Shhhh – don’t give the Transportation Security Administration any ideas).

If a person has a house and seeks electric or gas service, the common carrier utilities must provide it, assuming bills are paid. The utilities are not liable if a person uses the house to run a meth lab because under normal circumstances they could not know. (Although Homeland Security is seeking a change: “If you see something, say something” they whisper to the electric meter reader).

At this writing, members of Congress are backing off their support of SOPA. Constituents are complaining and when thousands of web sites went dark on January 18 it presumably got the message across. But that did not stop the U. S. Justice Department on January 20 from announcing criminal indictments against people involved in the Megaupload file sharing site and shutting down the site. Which raises the question: if the feds can already make such a move (and have people in New Zealand and other countires arrested for alleged piracy), who needs SOPA? And is all this criminal activity? As Megaupload defense attorney Ira Rothkin said: “It’s a civil case in disguise.”

There needs to be copyright protection. We have courts for that. If I post a Disney short online, Disney can come after me. But leave YouTube out of it. And, of course, there are already laws on the books regarding libel, terroristic threatening, pornography, etc. They can be applied to the internet with perhaps some minimal – minimal! – tinkering to adjust to technological realities.

Besides legacy media calling for extreme steps in copyright protection, there are also two possible back stories regarding SOPA. One is that it’s all about control. Governments hate – hate! – the freewheeling communication offered by the internet. Threats of copyright-related indictments will slow down the exchange of free information. That makes big government happy.

The other possible back story of SOPA is the opportunity for lots of litigation. With so many lawyers in Congress, litigation is a language they readily understand. Perhaps the bill shouldn’t be called SOPA, but “FEFLA:” the Full Employment for Lawyers Act. Lots of money to be made holding deep pocket internet service providers like Google liable.

A positive thing about the SOPA issue was how internet providers responded. Some shut down for a day. It was not enough to disrupt things, but it caused some inconvenience and got the message across.

Finally, businesses decided to stand up to the increasing control of the federal government. It’s about time.

Farmers, oil companies, and truckers are you paying attention?

Barack Obama: Bush-Reagan-Kennedy Tax Cutter?

One of the amazing arguments last week in the ludicrous fight over continuation of the 2 percent so-called payroll tax cut came from President Obama. Such a tax cut, the President said, was necessary to stimulate the economy.

I couldn't believe my ears.

Cutting taxes stimulates the economy? Mr. President, we thought you'd never come around!

That was George W. Bush's position in favor of his famous tax cuts. It was the argument Ronald Reagan made that resulted in a great quarter-century economic boom. It was also part of President Kennedy's effort to pull the country out of the sluggish economy that spilled over from the waning Eisenhower years.

But, alas, the President's new economic insights evaporated. Within a day or so, another story came out of the White House. It's almost as if the President or his advisors realized that it was not in his interests to be talking like Bush-Reagan-Kennedy. As a result, Obama trotted out the old Democratic demonstration of victimization: the family that couldn't buy pizza or visit an ailing relative because mean, evil Republicans wouldn't give them a tax break.

Looks like it worked --again, Lucy moved the football and the Charlie Brown Republicans fell for it and caved.

But it was ironic and fun to hear President Obama torpedo Democratic and Keynesian dogma by saying tax cuts stimulate the economy.

For the record, this whole nonsense over the continuance of a 2 percent tax reduction is ridiculous. Especially when the reduction extends for all of two months! Not a lot of pizza to buy in that scenario.

First of all, the payroll tax should never have been cut in the first place. Because, as we are told, that money coming out of our paychecks is technically not a tax -- it has traditionally been called a "contribution."

We are "contributing" money for our Social Security. And, as Al Gore told us, that "contribution" then goes to a "lockbox," waiting for that wonderful day when we receive a pension from it.

I know, I know -- but bear with me, Alice, we're in the federal wonderland for the moment.

So reducing the amount we "contribute" to Social Security is no more in our interests than reducing how much we put into a 401k or IRA.

Which means this was not an argument about a tax cut; rather, it was a smoke-and-mirrors game about how much we would be contributing to the federal retirement program -- a program designed to personally benefit us.

Of course, we all know Congress regularly breaks the lock on the lockbox and raids the Social Security funds for its own purposes. But given the realities of Social Security underfunding, there's no need that We the People should take part in the looting, too. Better to skip the pizza today in order to take care of our needs for tomorrow.

I realize this is all theoretical -- that the Social Security Trust Fund is a myth, as is the lockbox, and you'd better not scrimp on your "contributions" or people with guns and no sense of humor will show up on your door.

But for some of us, unlike people in federal government, words mean things. Humor me, if you will, in my beliefs in the myths, but continued underfunding of Social Security is not in our interests.

Thus, the payroll tax cut was a mistake, it never should have been continued, and the fact that the extension goes only two months shows what a silly, cynical game this is.

Even when you throw in pizza...

It Won't Hurt You None

Here is a recent column I wrote for the Washington County Observer. Although it's about an Arkansas event, it has national significance regarding religious freedom.

One of the first things law students learn is to think like a lawyer. That requires disassembling events and testing them agains evidence rules, witness veracity, legal precedents and the law's language. It helps remove emotions, prejudices, bias, and deceit from assessments of events.

Legal reasoning can decay into what I call "lawyerthink: " the parsing of language at the expense of comon sense. Even scripture describes the deadliness of focusing on the letter of the law rather than the spirit.

Lawyerthink has infected public views regarding religion, as evidenced by pressure on the Arkansas Department of Human Services to stop state funding to West Fork's Growing God's Kingdom Preschool because it "promotes" religion. Republican State Rep. Justin Harris and his wife, Marsha, operate the school. Full disclosure: I campaigned for Rep. Harris and am working for his reelection.

Lawyerthink attempts to squeeze every vestige of religion out of anything related to government. Lawyerthink, taken to its logical conclusions, would say that a church bus cannot drive on a state highway or that a city fire department should not respond to a call from a church. Those are imaginary offenses. But reality is just as bad as when a federal judge threatens arrest at a Texas graduation ceremony for those using words like "prayer" and "amen," a California couple is fined for a home Bible study, and God's name is banned from military funerals.

Attacks on faith are more than assaults of the Constitution's free exercise clause. They represent strikes on the culture itself, which is overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian. Especially here -- there is a reason rural Arkansas is considered part of the Bible Belt. That's why government and political meetings begin with prayer (often in Jesus' name, I might add). That's why there are crosses marking highway deaths. That's why so many folks go to church, even if only at Christmas and Easter. It's also why we say "God bless you" when somebody sneezes (although there was a California teacher penalizing students for doing that).

Note that culture does not make one holy or less holy than anybody else. But culture represents how people behave in a certain area, region, or nation.

The attacks on the preschool are attacks on local culture. Note that it's a Washington group pressuring the state DHS to lean on the Harrises. Most Arkansans recognize that the Harrises are using state funds (our tax money) to help local children and families. And they do it in a religious environment. Until now, the DHS itself recognized that.

I'm reminded of a country music show in a Western state. Before beginning their chuck wagon dinner, one of the cowboys said: "Now, folks, there's something we do around here before we eat and that's give thanks to God. So if you don't pray, that's alright.

"It won't hurt you none."

So relax. The Harrises are not establishing the First Church of Arkansas. They're Christians using our money to serve families against the background of a Judeo-Christian culture.

It's perfectly legal And beneficial.

And it won't hurt you none.

Welcome to the Revolution

I'm currently writing for the Washington County Observer. Here's a recent column:


The revolution begins immediately.

Right after "Dancing with the Stars."

Class warfare -- the dream of Marxists everywhere -- is supposedly taking root in the United States.

After all, Tea Partiers, marching in the streets holding signs dripping with unprintable hatred, are livid over the election of the first black President. And local communities are fielding police in riot gear to protect the masses in case Granny gets a bit rambunctious waving the Flag.

Occupy Wall Street claims to represent the masses as they speak, drum, protest, and make sure the generators are running to feed their hungry corporate-spawned iPods and laptops ("Power to the people!").

We're on the brink. It's brother and against brother. The Nation is ripping itself apart.

The horror!

Hardly.

We've seen worse. Even the founding of the Nation couldn't bring a consensus -- many people remaining loyal to King George felt a need to flee to Canada. Uprooting and voting with one's feet is serious business.

Then came the sixties. The eighteen sixties, that is. That's when the country really was torn apart and heated slogans turned into a horrific bloodbath. It indeed was brother against brother. And army against army.

And the nineteen sixties were no picnic, either. People lamenting alleged divisions of today often are unaware or forget the trauma of some forty years ago -- coast-to-coast burned cities, assassinations, campus riots, and strong generational splits.

True, there are strong differences of opinion today. And probably more than one holiday has been disrupted by a political dispute or two (Last year, my brother-in-law's pre-Thanksgiving dinner welcome to family and friends included this command: "No discussing politics. No politics in my house!").

But overall, typical American mutual respect and unity among one another remain.

But there are certain kinds of division going on. They are artificial divisions. "Astrosplits" I'd call them, much like the Astroturf protests of a rent-a-mob.

That's because dividing people brings confusion, discord, problems, and, if left unchecked, ultimately defeat. President Lincoln got it right when quoting the Bible's statement regarding how a house divided cannot stand.

Astrosplits pit political party against political party, men against women, race against race, and social and economic classes against one another. Astrosplits demonize certain people -- bankers and Wall Streeters, for instance. Because what's morale outrage without scapegoats?

But most people go about their business -- consumed with jobs, families, church, and social activities. They're not indifferent or apathetic, mind you (witness how the Tea Party came on the scene). And despite differences in politics, gender, race, ethnicity, income, and status, most Americans do a pretty good job of getting along.

Today, however, there is one new twist. We have a man in the White House who seems to revel in dividing us; indeed, to stoke it.

Because his desire to remake this nation according to his own ideology seems grounded in that old biblical fact: a house divided cannot stand.

Yet the President can huff and puff but he cannot blow this house down.

Because once again, Barack Obama does not understand the people he claims to lead.

The people of the United States of America.

Signs of the times

I've started writing for a local newspaper, The Washington County Observer. Here's a recent column:

It's about 5 in the morning and I can't sleep.

So online I start reading the Standard Highway Signs and Markings (SHSM) Book -- Interim Releases for New and Revised Signs of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices of the
Federal Highway Administration of the U. S. Department of Trnsportation.

That title alone should be enough to send me back to bed.

But there's somewhat interesting stuff here, at least to me, an individual who collects useless information (and who put it to good use by becoming a college professor). For highway engineers there are valuable instuctions that most of us don't think about. The online book has PDF files containing samples of what highway signs should look like and the entire effort is to make signs uniform in color, shape, reflectivity, and size. That way a driver anywhere in the country can readily understand road characteristics and hazards.

Of course. Makes sense.

But there is one area in which the Department of Transportation completely lost it and came up with sign regulations that were absurd, expensive, and, quite frankly, none of their business.

It was in the area of what we commonly call "street signs," the signs that tell us the names of streets. And the federal government decided that by 2018 municipalities, townships, and counties needed to have street signs that were uniform in size, color, type, style, and reflectivity. That meant taking down their current street signs and replacing them with the "new and improved" ones.

Faced with the $100 cost for each sign, local governments, the ones who have to pay the bills (with our tax money), let out such a howl that in August Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood backed off and said "common sense" (words rarely heard among big-government types) dictated that the street sign replacement requirement be scrapped.

There is a lesson here, something the Founding Fathers incorporated into the Constitution: some things are better left to the states; other things are naturally the sphere of the federal government.

Aristotle spelled it out in detail: basic human needs, he said, should be met by the most basic human unit, the family. What the family can't handle should be done by the local community, what the local community can't handle should be done by the next biggest entity, in our case the county, then on up the scale to the state and federal governments.

So the family decides its basic needs on health care, retirement, educating children, etc. At the other end of the scale, the federal government deals with things like defense. And local governments decided mundane things about potholes and sewage systems.

As as a result, families shouldn't preside over traffic court, counties shouldn't buy aircraft carriers, and the federal government shouldn't regulate street signs.

Despite Secretary LaHood's criticism of the street sign regulations, somehow I think they'll be back. It is, after all, about federal incursion into just about everything.

That, sad to say, is a sign of the times.

Creek of Consciousness

First the lemonade stands, now the treehouses. Did an interview on the radio a few weeks back with lawyer Dave Roland of the Missouri Freedom Center about how he's fighting cities outlawing children's lemonade stands (Thanks, Dave, for decriminalizing all the lemonade stands in Greeley, Colorado). Now Washington's WTOP Radio reports a Fall Church, Virginia, man has run afoul of zoning law for building his kids a treehouse. My question to lawyer Roland: why are cities doing this? His response: "Because they can"...The Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married received an e-mail from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) calling upon her to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. Is it that when there is well orchestrated, well-funded ongoing disruption, we should look for the union label?...Wall Street Journal says GE getting concerned about Tea Party flack for GE's close ties to Obama administration. CEO Jeffrey Immelt is even catching it from Mom -- his parents are big conservative media consumers and she told him not to join President's jobs council. Journal says GE claims crony capitalism charges are overblown..Joplin, Missouri's big need is for cash, according to my latest check of the post-tornado situation ...What do five of the last six presidents have in common? Except for George W. Bush, every president since Gerald Ford was left-handed. Before that, you have to go back to Harry Truman. And prior to World War II we had no left-handed presidents (except maybe James Garfield, who was so ambidexterous that he could write a sentence in Latin with one hand while writing the same sentence in Greek with the other!). Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt wrote a few years back that the reason we have all these latter-day lefties-in-chief might be because of abandonment of the old practice of imposing right-handness on all children... Danger -- old jokes ahead: Hold up your left hand. If you hold up left hand, your right hand is left, right? -- How many people would give their right arm to be ambidexterous? -- Do left-handers fight for their rights? And, yes, I am left-handed (Left on, brother!)...Lions and Tigers and winners, oh my! Some of the best news writing shows up on the sports page. Regarding the turnaround of the 4-0 Detroit Lions, Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay says: "Your average sentient human chooses to endure only one Lions game per year, on Thanksgiving." And that, he says, is just "an escape hatch from family dysfunction."