Slow down the machine police

  Suppose an intelligent machine deems you guilty of a crime. Suppose the police were to treat the machine’s judgment as evidence of your guilt. Would it matter that you are actually innocent?

  This hypothetical was once a plot device of dystopian novels and films. As law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on traffic cameras, cell phone data, and other information technologies, we should take care that fiction does not become reality.

The evil of drafting women (and men)

  In March, a federal agency named the Commission on Military, National, and Public Service issued an official report on whether America’s system of conscription should continue and, if so, whether women (along with men) should be subject to being drafted should circumstances warrant it.

  After months of study and deliberation, the commission answered yes to both questions.

First Amendment freedoms not just ‘office hours’ or when convenient

  Our First Amendment freedoms don’t keep office hours.

  There’s nothing in the 45 words that start the Bill of Rights that says our freedom of speech only applies when it’s convenient for others, or polite, or gains official permission to be heard.

  There’s no provision for our right to petition the government for redress of grievances — in plainer terms, to ask our elected and appointed officials to fix something, to correct an error or simply to do a better job — to be shunted aside in favor of convenience.

  And nowhere in that First Amendment is a priority given to creating a positive public image or deference provided to some amorphous, bureaucratic search for “order” or efficiency.

Common roots of the wars on immigrants and drugs

  I just read a very insightful article about the history of the war on drugs, entitled “How America Convinced the World to Demonize Drugs” by J.S. Rafaeli. The central theme of the article is that while nations around the world have their own particular drug laws and drug wars, the overall originator and instigator of the global war on drugs is the U.S. government.

  What particularly fascinated me about the article, however, was the way it showed how the war on drugs originally intersected with the war on immigrants.

Laurence M. Vance: People who really deserve a Trump pardon

  President Trump has issued three presidential pardons in the fifteen months he has been in office.

  According to Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment.” According to the case of Ex parte Garland (1867), the scope of the president’s pardon power is quite broad. And according to United States v. Klein (1871), Congress cannot limit the president’s grant of an amnesty or pardon.

  On August 25, 2017, Trump pardoned Joseph M. Arpaio, the longtime sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, for his conviction for criminal contempt of court on July 31, 2017. He had not yet been sentenced.

David L. Hudson Jr.: High Court reverses woman’s conviction for profanity uttered at store

  A Connecticut woman who uttered a slew of profanity at a store manager during a customer service dispute had her conviction reversed by the state high court. The Connecticut Supreme Court explained that context matters in determining whether an individuals’ verbal outburst qualifies as fighting words – defined as words that can cause the recipient to react immediately with violence.

  "Fighting words" remains one of those narrow, unprotected categories of speech that sometimes leads to breach-of-the-peace or disorderly conduct convictions. The U.S. Supreme Court first identified fighting words as an unprotected category in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), defining them as “words that by their very utterance inflict injury or cause an immediate breach of the peace.” Later cases have all but interred the first part of the definition – “words that by their very utterance inflict injury” – but fighting words cases still abound based on the “immediate breach of the peace” definition.

Gene Policinski: When it comes to our freedoms, is a C+ grade good enough?

  When it comes to our core freedoms, is a C+ grade good enough?

  A new “First Amendment Report Card,” unveiled  Thursday by the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute, gives our First Amendment freedoms — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — a barely passing grade.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Why are Americans searched at the border?

  Whenever American citizens travel to another country, they are subjected to intrusive searches at the hands of U.S. officials upon returning to the United States.

  Why? What’s the justification?

  Since Americans living today have all been born and raised under this type of system, hardly anyone questions it. It’s just accepted, passively and submissively, as part of living in a “free” society.

  Yet, when the government wields the authority to conduct a complete search of people without any suspicion of a crime having been committed, that is far from any free society.

Laurence M. Vance: The root of support for the drug war

  Although many states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, some states have decriminalized the possession of certain amounts of marijuana, and four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, bipartisan support for the drug war throughout the United States continues unabated and unquestioned.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Private vs. government data collection

  When referring to the massive, super-secret NSA surveillance scheme over the American people (and the people of the world), commentators oftentimes conflate data collection by the government with data collection by private entities, especially those on the Internet. The notion is that it’s all sort of the same thing and that since people are willing to let Google, Yahoo, Amazon, retailers, and physicians know so much about them, they really shouldn’t have any reservations about letting the government do the same thing.

Ilya Shambat: The Constitutional Pharisees

There have been many Republican and Libertarian politicians claiming that the Democrats have been violating American Constitution. Because so many people are saying this, this claim must be answered.

  As any student of Christianity knows, far more important than obeying the letter of the Bible is obeying its spirit. The people who obeyed the letter and not the spirit were known as Pharisees. These people followed the Biblical law, but they did it for wrong reasons. They did it for social climbing and holier-than-thou one-upmanship and not for the love of God.

Sheldon Richman: Liberty, security and terrorism

  “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

  It would be nice if Benjamin Franklin’s famous aphorism were as widely believed as it is quoted. I doubt that Sen. Lindsey Graham and his ilk would express disagreement, but one cannot really embrace Franklin’s wisdom while also claiming that “the homeland is the battlefield.” (The very word homeland should make Americans queasy.)

Jacob G. Hornberger: One more life ruined by the Drug War

  The drug war has just taken another victim. This time the feds have ruined the life of Marc Gerson, a star law student at Georgetown University, who, according to the Washington Post, “was Phi Beta Kappa at Georgetown, a top economics student and an award-winning debater.” Washington, D.C., federal judge Reggie B. Walton has just sentenced Gerson to serve four years in the penitentiary, which also effectively eliminates his dream of practicing law.