Aim Low and You'll Never Be Disappointed

Which One Is Ed?

2011-12-06T00:03:00.006-06:00

I have finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker and have been recommending it to the few of my friends I think might read it. Pinker convinces me that violence has declined and he convinces me about the reasons it has declined. Neither my view of human nature nor of our future are the same as they were before I read the book.

The two most immediate concepts impacted for me: political correctness and the evolving sense of decency. The evolving sense of decency will take a little more work, so I'll comment on political correctness.

I have for the most part viewed what we call political correctness as an irritating interference with free expression: Who cares if I say "stewardess" or "flight attendant?" (Apparently a lot of people). I heard a slight quibble this weekend over the use of "Comanches" as a sort of a mascot for a professional organization. The organizer who liked the name because it was Texan and Native American argued that the name was being honored and not ridiculed. The politically correct objector said we should not use any racial or ethnic monikers because it promotes stereotyping. I'm not sure who wins this in the long run, but after reading Pinker's book, it occurs to me the advocate of the name may be dating himself (and me, since it sounded fine to me) whereas the PC objector may be right about where we are going in society.

When I was in high school, it was perfectly polite to make fun of homosexuals. I did not hear the word "gay" used in that sense until later. Then, I thought a perfectly good word (Like the Gay Nineties) had been ruined. Much the same about jokes about violence against women. A man would discipline his wife, much in the way of Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew." Cruelty to animals was much more acceptable when I was young, now it leads to Dahmerism.

Now, these things have changed. And violence has also plummeted. Pinker makes a connection. If he is right, good riddance to bad jokes and welcome PC. We can call the group The Fat Old White Men Pretending to be Young and Energetic Like a Band of Plains Indians Warriors.

Dano dreams about the Newt

2011-12-05T23:40:00.003-06:00

I had been a steadfast believer that Newt Gingrich was politically dead, and even when it became apparent that he would be the next in line after Trump, Bachmann, Perry, and Cain to have a bubble that seemed to threaten Romney, I initially assumed that his bubble would burst on the basis of his massive negative political baggage. For the first time, today, I am beginning to entertain the thought the Newt may actually get nominated. There are a few reasons for this. First, the Rupert Murdoch machine seems to be for him. Fox News is treating Romney harshly and Newt with kid gloves. The Wall Street Journal editorial board seems to be pro-Gingrich. That Murdoch machine is very powerful in the R selection process. The entire Republican family gathers around Fox every night. On the other hand, I still think the R electorate is having amnesia about Newt's history. Some people say, "well, everyone knows about all that stuff." But it is hard to over estimate the stupidity of the American electorate. I think the R voters have forgotten most of it, and Newt still remains vulnerable to someone exploiting it effectively against him. Nonetheless, his lead, at the moment, is large. In Florida, the biggest state which votes in January, three polls showed him with 42%, 47% and 50% in quick succession. All those still have Cain showing up in the teens (Romney in upper teens), and if you assume that Cain withdraws or completely implodes, those figures for Newt go to about 50, 55, and 60. Now, those numbers are, quite frankly, staggering. Maybe he has a fall in his near future, but it is going to have to be a very long, large fall. Of course, when the states start voting, the states farther down the list are affected by the earlier voting states. Right now, regarding the first two, it looks like Newt in Iowa and Romney in NH, although Mitt is only slightly ahead in NH, which is a tailor-made state for him. If that's how it comes out, then it would seem that South Carolina (the other January state) and Florida will feel free to vote as they choose. Now, if Mitt somehow wins in Iowa, which seems unlikely now, and then adds a win in NH, he might stop the Newt surge and get a bandwagon effect. I guess that has to be his goal.In all the head to heads I have seen pairing Obama against Newt or Mitt, respectively, Obama does about 6 points better against Newt. That seems believable to me, and, as I have said, I do not think the other candidates have sufficiently exploited Newt's weaknesses, as of now, and so that number could get wider. Obama is running anti-Romney ads in the primary states, in effect,trying to help the non-Romneys, or, perhaps, just Gingrich. They do that sort of thing a lot in California. I have not seen it here or nationally before, but California has perfected the art of one party's candidate invading the other's primary to try to influence it. Of course, Romney is making the obvious point to the voters--Obama does not want him to be the nominee--but I am not sure the voters are sufficiently sophisticated to realize what is happening. So, a perfect storm seems to be gathering around Romney. Before today, I never wavered in my expectation that he would be the R nominee. Now, I think there is substantial doubt.

At Night, He Is Studying for an IT Career

2011-11-27T17:25:00.007-06:00

Each year I seem to end up with one BIG BOOK. Last year it was Ian Morris and Why the West Rules--For Now. This year it is shaping up to be Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. I could list about 50 books, for 50 years. I'm never sure when I am reading them which ones will keep coming back to visit me. Some from when I was younger include Eric Hoffer's True Believer and Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled.

I mention these, because although there would be more famous books on my list (if I ever made this list), I don't think these books are known to most people I know.

The Better Angels of Our Natures may be a book that will give me a sense that, even without major changes in the way things are going, things may turn out better than they have been anyway. (Candide is probably on my list, also, and I have about 45 years avoiding becoming Dr. Pangloss, so you can imagine my worry about this confession.)

Wouldn't that be the damnest thing. All these years, fearing that we were becoming the worst of all possible worlds, and then one new book, and I can finally lean back and relax.

This book makes me think science is about to tell us why people do bad things to each other. Maybe, then, violence can stop. Pinker doesn't make this promise, but I'm reading between the lines. Or maybe I'm just making up new lines.

One of the many factors that Pinker credits for an improved humanity is satire. He quotes the King of Brobdingnag when he responds to Gulliver's description of English government: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth." That has long seemed an accurate description to me, but I am delighted to accept any evidence of change.

I am not sure if, like many old men, I am becoming more conservative as I age, or if there is really some hope that gradual improvement is possible in people, families, society, government, law. If I'm just getting old, I'll ask my friends to wait until after the holidays before they dump the ugly truth in my lap again.

Dano on Newt and others

2011-11-23T18:34:00.003-06:00

Dano reports on the Republican debate last night. I missed it. I believe I was watching a re-run of Dexter. However, I'll take Dano's report as the whole truth and comment on the debate as well. Ron Paul, may be 75, but at least he knows what he believes and sticks by it. Dano's report also, oddly, stirs some sympathy for Newt. I've heard about Fannie and Freddie and the censure and all the marriages, but at least the guy can talk. Maybe that should be a threshold requirement.

I guess I am a little surprised that Gingrich was allowed to come out of this debate completely unscathed. Out in the real world, journalists, op-ed people, and probably the other campaigns, off the record, are attacking him vigorously. At the moment, believe it or not, Newt is ahead in Iowa and nationally. It has been my prediction that this will not last. I'll stick with that, but I will say that I would like nothing better than to be wrong. If the R's actually nominated Newt--and I guess that possibility has at least to be mentioned because Iowa votes in a mere 42 days--absent some earth-shaking change, I think Obama would mop the floor with him. But, anyway, at the moment, Newt leads, and last night he got nothing but softballs from the moderator, the audience questions, and the other candidates. Romney, with one exception to be mentioned below, did his usual good job. Cain has lost his confident, happy personality and now has a little of the "deer in the highlights" look to him. I think helives in great fear of making another showing of his vast ignorance of the sorts of things that a candidate for president should know. I think his reaction is completely understandable. I also think he's toast. Now, his poll numbers still show him to be arguably in contention, but the leak, and the fall, continue. Much as I dislike Perry, every time he has the floor, I cringe that he is going to embarrass himself. I suspect most other people have the same reaction. Bachmann had a decent performance and was heard from a lot. I doubt she will survive the Iowa Caucuses, but she has a bit of a chance there. Before her drop, she did win the Ames, Iowa straw poll; she was born in Iowa; she holds office in a neighboring state; and she has campaigned very, very heavily in Iowa. Maybe she will do well enough to survive there. My bet is no. This was a "national security" debate, and so a lot was on foreign policy. Ron Paul's views on those issues are clearly out of themainstream among most Republican voters. But he certainly did nothing to try to cover that up. Rather, he defended all of his dovish (and perhaps isolationist) views very vigorously and passionately, and, I thought, quite persuasively. He seemed to have part of the audience on his side. I continue to think he will do well better than he did in '08. Also, I think everyone seems to be forgetting that his age--75--has always been considered way too old for a presidential candidate. I didn't listen to any of the post-debate spin, and I haven't read anything about it yet, so this spin is purely my own. One thing that happened that I think may have been a mistake by Romney is this: one time Paul was speaking, with passion, about one of his foreign policy positions; the TV had a split screen so that you could see Paul speaking and you could also see Romney's reaction. Romney at one point "rolled his eyes." I think that may be significant because Ithink it has the potential of really pissing off the Paul supporters. They have cult-like loyalty. Romney may not have known he was on a split screen. If Romney gets the nomination, he will need those Paul voters. I think some day he may regret that eye-rolling. Like today, for instance. Gingrich's hope is that while each other "non-Romney" had its 15 minutes and then had its bubble burst, he gets his 15 minutes so late in the game that his bubble is still there when the real voting starts! I guess it's possible. I suppose stranger things have happened. But I can't think of any at the moment.

T.S. Eliot Hope and Despair

2011-11-21T18:09:00.005-06:00

I can't say I've understood any poem by T.S. Eliot, even after reading the explanations by the scholars. But I keep reading them, because the language traps me.

A couple of lines in Ash Wednesday:

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

Climbing three sets of stairs, the climber first has to get past the devil with that deceitful face and then at the third landing (as I envision it) he finds,

Strength beyond hope and despair.

I have wondered about asking for "hope" or just engaging in the act of "hoping." How can we hope if we have faith. James says something like this: "Sisters and Brothers, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. These trials test your faith and bring you patience. Patience causes you to mature and gives you wisdom."

James doesn't say hope for something else, but have joy in the trials you have. The proper response is patience, not hope. And of course, despair is just the bad side of hope. Patience replaces despair as well as hope.

Eliot writes that despair and hope are both falsehoods worn by the devil and there is a strength that gets you past them.

I like this. If, as I suspect, God has made each of us exactly who we are, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what God made. If, as I suspect, God has made the whole world, past and future, hope and despair are false emotions; the world will be tomorrow just what God planned.

Differently put for the more secular among us: If, as I suspect, we are each determined to be who we are by our heredity and environment, then pride and shame are false emotions; we are what the universe has made us to be. If, as I suspect, past and future are determined by the laws of the universe, hope and despair are false emotions, the world we be tomorrow exactly what it must be based on forces in motion from long in the past.

Dano thinks Romney can win in Iowa and New Hampshire

2011-11-21T17:51:00.004-06:00

Dano is still handicapping the Republicans. I doubt he ever voted for one, but he never played for the Cowboys either and he always has an opinion about who will win. He sees Romney as a threat now in Iowa and New Hampshire.

He says:

The most recent two polls in Iowa and NH on the R race show Gingrichwith a big lead in Iowa (32 to Romney's 19) and Romney leadingGingrich by only 2 (29-27) in New Hampshire which had long beenthought to be a Romney lock.I don't think Gingrich will do nearly as well as these polls show.After he got up in the polls, commentators all over the place--fedprobably and secretly by opposition research from the othercandidates, at least in part-- have been re-stating all of hisbaggage. The big money from Freddy Mac is one; but his wholehistory, when re-remembered, just has too much negative in it toremain viable. Multiple adulteries, marriages, a fortune he hasmade as a crony capitalist since his years as speaker; and no one hasyet even bothered to mention that he was charged with an ethicsviolation in a Republican controlled House and fined hundreds ofthousands of dollars for it.To me, it looks like this thing is going to break pretty nicely forMitt Romney as we near the real voting. Four differentchallengers--Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich--have a bubble andthen each for one reason or another is found to have somedisqualifying negative. I think the anti-Romneys latched ontoGingrich because they had been burned time and again by being seducedby candidates who are so stupid and/or ignorant (Bachmann, Perry,Cain). At least Newt is smart and can speak the language.Now, the polls still also show Cain somewhat in contention, but thatcandidacy has a leak, and I don't think that leak is reparable.I also read that while Newt has raised a fair amount of moneyrecently, he still has little or no organization on the ground inIowa. In Iowa, there almost has to be a ground game of get-out-the-voters to get people to go to those caucuses, which is more timeconsuming than just voting. I get the impression that Newt is not agood organizer. He could hire one, of course, but a certain amountof discipline must come from the candidate. One also has toremember, he has never actually run for president before--heconsidered it several times but didn't run--and he has never actuallyrun in an election in anything larger than a Congressional district.I think he likes to spout pompous ideas and sound smart, and he maynot realize that that's not enough to win the Iowa caucuses.I think Mitt senses all this; for a long time, he made no seriouscommitment to Iowa because it is a place where he seemed likely tolose, and he wanted to be able to play down a loss. Well, just inthe last few days, he has decided to go all out there for a win. Hesees the opening. Romney is thus going to go all out to finish firstin both Iowa and New Hampshire. I think he has a decent chance topull it off. If he does that, it might create a sense ofinevitability that will make him the effective nominee pretty quickly.Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the last post, I am expecting a prettygood showing for Ron Paul, not only in Iowa, but in a lot of places.It is true that, mainly because of his foreign policy ideas--that is,he dislikes war and torture--80% of the Republican electorate willprobably never vote for him. But he gets his votes--now lookinglike perhaps15 or more percent--anywhere and everywhere. He'llalways have some money. And he'll always have a lot ofvolunteers--in any state. I read that he has a good organization inIowa.

The Rise of Ron Paul

2011-11-21T13:10:00.003-06:00

Dano in the following post discusses Gingrich's likely collapse and the benefit to Ron Paul. Ron Paul has long been my favorite Republican. In fact, I think he is better on war issues than almost all the Democrats. I am not a libertarian; far from it. A true libertarian begins with a belief in free will and I can't go there. But I also think that government largesse is distributed so unfairly that the poor may be helped if subsidies to the rich could be curbed. Anyway, as weird as Ron Paul is, I still prefer him to a Gingrich or a Romney.

Dano says:

Well, just after my last post, where I concluded that there was a good chance that Gingrich would emerge as the main alternative to Romney,Newt got hit with an avalanche of bad publicity about his work forFreddy Mac in the early 2000's. In a recent debate, a moderatorasked him what he did for Freddie Mac to earn $300,000, and Newt saidit was just advice "as a historian", that he told them they weremaking bad loans and that a bubble was looming. It turns out hewas paid $1.6M instead of $300,000, and the folks he spoke to atFreddy Mac say they remember no advice along the lines that Gingrichclaims. They said he was hired to help them state positions thatwould be Republican-friendly so that the then-Republican controlledCongress would not dismantle Freddy and Fannie.Freddy and Fannie are hated by the Tea Partiers, so when this sinksin, it is going to hurt him--pretty badly, I think. He was tryingto help Freddie survive Republican attacks, and he lied about itbesides that.It hasn't sunk in yet. The most recent polls in Iowa and N.H. showhim in a very strong second place in both, one per cent behind Cain inthe former and 2% behind Romney in the latter.So, I am back to the position that it looks like Romney if for noreason other than you can't beat someone with no one. It is 46 daysto the Iowa Caucuses, and 53 to the N.H. Primary. I don't know ifthere is even enough time for another candidate to become thenon-Romney. Now, Santorum is conservative enough to satisfy thebase and has no big flip flop problem. Jennifer Rubin in the Wapohas several times suggested that he might have an ascendency. He isalso not a bad debater. But Santorum has never been out of singledigits, mostly not even out of low single digits.Another man who warrants discussion is Ron Paul. His numbers areinching up. Now, he will never be nominated because he is out ofthe mainstream of the R party on a lot of issues, especially onforeign policy where he is a consistent dove. So, I have alwaysthought he would be irrelevant--getting his 10 per cent or maybe even15 or a little higher--never enough to win anything. Well, hisnumbers in some polls are starting to rub against 20. So, he mayfinish second in a lot of primaries; I say "a lot" because he will noteasily drop out. He has a cult-like following that keeps giving himmoney no matter what. So, he can run and run and run and run, andhe may keep finishing second a lot--might even eak out a win or twosomewhere.I'll stipulate that there is some wishful thinking here, but I amhoping he loses (he will) but he does so well that he gets pissed offand runs in the General Election as an independent or third partier.He did that before--Libertarian candidate in 1988. However, hisfollowing is much larger now. Paul believes in conspiracy theories,and is a little off balance, so I can imagine him working himself intoa lather with the idea that he was cheated out of winning by the REstablishment. If he were to do that, Obama would benefit greatly.One poll on this showed Obama beating Romney by 6 without Paul as athird partier but by 12 with Paul in the race.Paul would know that he would be hurting the R's, but I am not surethat would stop him. He dislikes the R's about as much as the D's.I have even noticed that he rarely criticizes Obama in the debates;rather, he criticizes the whole American status quo, and thus"everyone else." Now, the history of third party candidates is thatthey poll well early sometimes but their percentage usually drops byelection day, sometimes by a lot. But in the case of Paul, while hemight have some of that usual erosion, his cult-like backers aremostly going to stay with him. And they don't mind losing toomuch; they think they are on some mission which goes beyond 2012.That would be a real nightmare for the R's.Obama's prospects still look pretty decent to me, but I worry thatEurope may plunge the world into more economic distress, and it wouldbe hard to see him winning if the economy were even worse than it isnow.

More from Dano on the presidential race

2011-11-18T07:11:00.002-06:00

The commentariat is more and more seeing the R race the way I did acouple of weeks ago, that is, that it was shaping up, at leasttemporarily, as Romney vs. Gingrich. Then, there was a lot of talkabout how Cain had apparently survived his sexual harassment scandal.Now, everyone seems to see Cain as mortally wounded for variousreasons. Even before that scandal, I thought he would fall by theweight of his own vast ignorance. He's doing that--he can't thinkwhat to say about Obama's Libya policy, thinks China doesn't havenuclear weapons, has never heard of the "neo-conservative" movement,etc. He really was meant only to be just a vanity candidate.Cain's numbers show him still in contention, but there is a slow leak.The national poll numbers are going to start bouncing all over theplace when the states start voting. The Iowa Caucuses are in 48days. So, the most important polls to look at for the R's are Iowapolls. The most recent one is Cain 20, Gingrich 19, Romney 14, Paul10 Bachmann 10. Perry 5, and Santorum 5. The numbers are veryfluid--60% say they may change their mind. So, anything mighthappen there. Right now, I think the most likely scenario is thatNewt wins it.Perry really is dead, by the way. His disapproval/approval numbersare horrible and reflect no chance of a resurrection.Now, some say that Gingrich will also be exposed as too moderate and aflip-flopper, and there is some chance of that. He once believed inclimate change and some aspects of what is now Obamacare. When a"conservative" has been in politics as long as he has, it isimpossible to have always had the views that satisfy 2011 TeaPartiers. So, there is that danger for him. Also, there is thatbaggage of 3 marriages, an ethics violation, and forced resignation.The R primary voters seem to have forgotten about all that.What Newt is trying to do--and it may work with the R's--is to suggestthat he represents truly apocalyptic change because of his cerebraland visionary ideas and approach. Also, Newt says he wants 7Lincoln-Douglas style debates with Obama lasting at least 3 hourseach. That wouldn't happen, of course, but by suggesting it, he iseffectively asserting that he would do well in such marathon debates;and a lot of R voters are understandably worried about whether some oftheir candidates could debate Obama without completely embarrassingthemselves. My perception is that the R's think Newt could handleObama.Going back to his apocalyptic change thing, I think the R voters dolike to see this election--or at least would like to see it--as amajor, pivotal, Manichaean struggle of good vs. evil. Gingrichplays to that feeling. Romney does not. Gingrich would like theR's to see Romney as a competent technocrat--a manager, sort of aRepublican Michael Dukakis. If he can pull that sort of appeal off,he may be forgiven his previous moderate positions more so than Romneyhas. So, my bottom line is--still probably Romney for thenomination, but this may get very interesting, particularly the Newtthing.Obama is now beating all of them 6 or more points in head to heads.I think his strategy of (very mild and subtle) "class warfare", callsfor higher taxes on the top bracket, attacking the intransigence ofthe R's in Congress, etc., is a winner. A big danger to him,though, would be if the American economy--bad as it is right now--gotworse. A Europe meltdown might cause that to happen. If theeconomy gets substantially worse in the next year, he would be very,very vulnerable. If it stays about the same, I think he pulls itout.

Should we be so afraid?

2011-11-13T20:08:00.003-06:00

Everyone I talk to seems to have a story about a kidnapping, home invasion or murder. Channel 5 is doing a series about the drug war in Mexico spilling over the border. Some of the guys I know are buying AR-15 and AK-47 to give to their wives. People complain they can't sell their houses to escape the coming violence.

So far, though, the statistics don't bear it out. When considered in terms of murders as a percentage of the population, Brownsville is still safer than Texas or the nation as a whole. We are also safer in terms of violent crime. We are a little higher with theft, but most of us don't buy a AR-15 to fight off a GPS theft through the passenger window of the car.

Brownsville has about 4 murders per year for every 100,000 people. Of course, this is horrible if you are a loved one of a victim, but there is no way to run away from it and stay in the United States. You can go to Europe. Most of Europe have had under 1 murder for 100,000 people for years. Europe, right now, is probably the safest place homo sapiens has every been since the beginning of the species.

Rapes, robberies and assaults are also much lower in Brownsville than the rest of the country. Even auto thefts are lower: who would have guessed it. We are safer than Port Isabel and Harlingen.

We used to go to Matamoros for dinner, a haircut, the pharmacy. Now most everyone I know is afraid to go. This is not born out by the statistics, either. Tamaulipas has a rate of 9 murders per 100,000. This is twice that of Brownsville, but still less than Houston and much safer than going to DC (24 per 100,000). The Yucatan has a mere 2 murders per 100,000, almost down to European levels. A visit to the Mayan ruins may be safer than staying at home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Apologizing to Hobbes

2011-11-12T16:30:00.006-06:00

Maybe I owe Thomas Hobbes an apology. All these years I thought he was just a propagandist for Charles II. I thought Hobbes was wrong about human nature. He insisted we needed a strong government, a Leviathan, to control man's evil nature. Without this strong government, we would be in constant fear, in danger of violent death, "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

This is not what I have concluded of human nature with some 35 years of talking to folks in jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Or those people on the outside who are largely indistinguishable from those on the inside. I have tended to the argument of Rousseau that "nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state...." And of Kropotkin, that the natural state of man (without the Leviathan) is one of mutual aid. Differently put, people, unless society locks them in cages together like rats in a small pen, do a pretty good job of getting along. They help each other because the cooperative groups are more likely to survive. Until we have been damaged, we don't have a desire to damage other people.

I am not ready to jettison this view of human nature. But I have been reading a book by Steven Pinker that argues that when Hobbes was asking to for strong government, he had his reasons, and a good argument apart from trying to please a young king. Pinker proves quite convincingly that without strong government, in history, rates of murder have been higher. Much higher. Not uncommonly, a hundred times higher.

No wonder Hobbes was born as twins with "fear." No wonder, he wanted someone, even a silly, hedonistic Merrie Monarch, with the power to stop the violence.

Pinker has published "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." He compares murder rates throughout the existence of our species. He looks at the level of homicides during anarchy of the hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies. He argues a five-fold decrease in murders in moving into agricultural societies. In the move from feudal territories to kingdoms, he argues a ten-fold to fifty-fold decline in the murder rates. Since World War II, he argues we have moved into a New Peace and a time of fewer civl wars, genocides, repressions by autocratic governments and terrorist attacks.

Oh Thomas, I'll be more patient with you in the future.

Dano's thoughts on the presidential race

2011-11-10T11:06:00.003-06:00

My friend Dano has been sending me regular observations about the progress
of the presidential race. I think it is good stuff and I asked him for
permission to pass it on. Here it is:

Ok, I have had a few more days of the Cain scandal to absorb, and we just had another R debate; and last night we had all those ballot referenda in Ohio, Mississippi, Maine, etc.; so here are my thoughts: Perry had a big gaffe tonight and is dead because he said he was going to close 3 cabinet level agencies, and he could only remember two of them. The way he did it made it stick out like a sore thumb. It was painful to watch, even for someone who wishes him ill--such as myself. I honestly really felt sorry for the dumb-ass. It is being mentioned by commentators as one of the worst debate moments of alltime. He actually had a good debate otherwise, and later he did remember the third agency (it was Energy). Nonetheless, he is toast. He may have been anyway, but he is now. It will be an internet laughing stock type of moment.Romney did his usual competent performance, and so I assume nothing has changed for him. About 25% of the R party are for him and about 75% are pretty strongly against him.Cain avoided any further damage from his scandal and otherwise had a good night. Nonetheless, I still think he is a dead man walking. It is obvious that the scandal has enormous potential for story after story after story and detail after detail, and "drip, drip, drip. "Eventually, it will occur to the R voters that that is an unacceptable situation for a nominee, even aside from his other shortcomings, which are major. I noticed tonight that the other candidates no longer feel the need to attack him, as they did vigorously a month ago. They know it, too. The problem for them is that Cain may hang on to 20% or thereabouts ofthe vote nationally, and in Iowa--the first to vote--too long for them to gather up the residue of his eventual collapse. In other words, he may not fall fast enough to help any of the others. NYT columnist Charles Blow (a black liberal) gave a reason for this: the conservatives like what he says about race; Cain says that most blacks have been "brainwashed" to stay on the "Democratic plantation." He says that people who do not have jobs have only themselves to blame. By being for him and knowing that he says such things, he exonerates alot of typical arch-conservatives of a lifetime of racism. So, they love him and will not abandon him easily. This creates the possibility that he may stay as the number two to Romney long enough that no one else can ever reach that spot in time to stop Romney.The next in line for the anti-Romney, at this point, is clearly Gingrich. He has had all good debate performances. He does not attack the other R's, and so no one ever sees the mean side of him except when he attacks Obama, which they like, of course. His is gradually coming up in all polls. I think there is a chance that--especially if the Cain collapse speeds up--he may end up the main opponent to Romney. He'd probably still lose; people will remember his three marriages and the nasty circumstances of his two divorces (Romney made a point tonight, with Newt standing next to him, that he had been married to only one woman--an accomplishment for a Morman, I suppose--for more than 40 years). So, it still looks like Romney to me. But I would like to see it devolve to a Romney-Gingrich race just for the fun of it. Cain is never going to get that nomination, and he now is just standing in theway of others who might have a chance to knock off Romney. As for Obama, things look better for him. The ballot initiatives in Ohio, Maine, and, incredibly, Mississippi, look good for him, and there is mounting evidence that the tea-soaked R's have over-played their hand since the 2010 election. Particularly in several swing states--Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, as major examples--the 2010 elections created R governors and legislatures that are now patently unpopular in those states, and this phenomenon will help Obama to win those states. The Occupy Movement and other studies and articles have educated the electorate--particularly the independents--on the fact that the gap between rich and the middle class in this countryhas risen very dramatically since the Reagan election in 1980. An absolute majority of the country polls that R policies are designed to favor the rich. Also, the majority of both the independent and moderate voters have now been convinced that the R's are intentionally sabotaging the economy to help their election chances against Obama. This creates an atmosphere in which Obama can win. It creates a situation where he can make the opponents the main issue instead of himself--which he needs to do because he has been no great success. But as things stand now, he is the favorite against any R nominee. I don't know if he even deserves to be the beneficiary of these sentiments, given his choice of Geitner as Treasury Sec. and his relatively soft on Wall Street administration, but he is the one who is in position to benefit from it, if he plays his cards right. One danger is that a lot of the people on the left will conclude that he is not part of the solution, but rather part of the problem, and will stay home. We will see.

Joe Krause for Congress

2010-12-29T19:29:00.010-06:00

The Good, the bad and the ugly are all lining up to run for Congress from South Texas. I'm informed by someone who should know that Cameron County will pretty well have its own Congressional district, with the county intact and a little chunk of Willancy and Hidalgo in the district. This will come about for several reasons. The Republicans with about 2/3 of the House of Representatives seats will want it, because they can isolate a lot of the Democratic (their euphemism for Hispanic) votes in one district. The Cameron County movers and shakers want it because so many look in the mirror and see a Congressman, rather like looking at the picture of Dorian Gray.

Nueces voted almost completely on racist lines this election. Hispanics lost whether running as Democrats as Republicans with the Republicans voting in high numbers. Whether Farenthold can be elected again out of Corpus Christi is questionable (apparently he's even too weird for the teabaggers). But Cameron County will almost certainly elect someone besides Farenthold and in a presidential election year, almost certainly a Democrat.

As these things go, the worst rise to the top, because they are willing to do things, say things and accept money from groups that will nauseate the slightly less-awful candidate. It is to be accepted that the Democratic candidate will be semi-literate and wildly unqualified for the job, but cunning and ruthless in getting a vote or a contribution. We can expect someone with long experience in squeezing vendors for contributions and digging up and slinging the most mud, real or invented. The campaign will be slick and professional and the candidate will only be in public with air-brushing or on television with someone who can read reading the commercials.

Then, I'll almost inevitably vote for this cretin. If it looks like he could lose to a Republican, I might even give a little money if I happen to have some.

That is why I think Joe Krause should run for Congress as a Catholic Candidate to give me a choice. I would support Dorothy Day if she would move here and run, but since that won't happen, Joe is my next best choice.

Defining the Catholic platform is pretty easy because Leo XIII and others wrote it. Then Dorothy Day wrote a lot about it as it applies to United States issues of the 20th Century. (see the enclosure link for other links to the writings of Dorothy Day). Joe lives it. The quote by Pope Paul VI,"If you want peace, work for justice" is the theme of the campaign. Valley Interfaith is the kitchen cabinet. We look to GK Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc and John Ruskin for guidance.

Some of the positions:

No death penalty. In fact, pro-life from conception to the grave, so
no abortion and no euthanasia either. Prisons will become rare as well
because punishment will no longer be a moral or legal basis for regulating
society. Inmates, felons and illegal aliens should get the vote.

A living wage based on universal ownership of property, guilds and other
protections. Capitalism is replaced by Distributism. Every child
upon conception will be given his or her fair share of the national bounty, so
every child becomes a financial boon for the mother, who of course has her own
share of the national bounty.
Profit is made up of unfairly withheld wages. As Ruskin says, the responsibility of the businessman is to bring prosperity to the community. The responsibility of the lawyer is to bring justice to the community. The responsibility of the doctor is to bring health to the community.
Accumulated wealth is a form of violence. And shows a lack of faith. Anyone who accepts stewardship over wealth or power must also accept personal poverty and precarity.
No usury. All debts are cancelled every seven years. All property is redistributed equally every fifty years. (We're way overdue, so we can start that now).

No borders. Borders are a form of violence created to allow the
wealthy to protect their wealth. Strangers are welcome.

No wars, no nuclear weapons.

Quick, tell me Solomon Ortiz' and Blake Farenthold's campaign slogans. Now tell me Joe's wouldn't be better. Run Joe Run.

Political Corruption

2010-12-23T23:32:00.005-06:00

Every corrupt politician's favorite rant is against political corruption. As a rule, the more corrupt the more ranting.

It is hard to imagine a political scene without corruption. Willie Stark (when setting up an opponent's suicide) in All the King's Men, said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

Politicians who steal are as common as junkies with bindles. Deuteronomy and Timothy both warn us not to muzzle the ox that grinds the grain. I've heard insiders use this as the justification for allowing a little corruption. A popular saying in Austin about Texas lobbyists, is that if you can't take their money, screw their women, drink their whiskey and still vote against them, you don't belong in the legislature.

One method is to get the million dollar cash bond from the drug dealer, knowing he will jump bond. The county gets the money, and this improves everyone's (politician's) living conditions and patronage, and who cares about the drug dealer anyway. He won't come back.

Another form of this corruption is to cruise the poor area of town and find cars that were too expensive for the house. Go ask the homeowner if anyone claims the car and often they'll say "no." Then the District Attorney's office has a lot of cool cars for undercover operations or resale. It is also a way to get houses, cash, heavy gold chains and Scarface posters.

I can't muster much outrage anymore. After a while, neither could Lincoln Steffens, who made it his career. I've often suspected that the small bribes in the Mexico I visited in the 1960's and 70's were less harmful than the high cost of entering the legal system in the United States that excluded so many people (then and now).

I don't believe Robert Penn Warren was much outraged either. Another quote from All the King's Men:

Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We
may judge results, but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the
deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is
bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

More Ian Morris: It's not who wins, but whether the game matters.

2010-12-23T22:48:00.003-06:00

Daniel Bell's book, the End of Ideology, was popular when I was young. The general idea was that prosperity and technilogical advances had made all this left-right ideology unnecessary and beside the point. Then, every one got excited about politics in the sixties and I decided that Bell must have been wrong.

Morris' book (which I have now finished) makes me wonder if maybe Bell was right, after all. I would miss celebrating the 19th Century radicals like Debs and Haywood, but if the pie is growing as fast as Morris believes, worrying about politics is a waste of everyone's time. We should all just make sure that as many of us as possible have the most advanced technology available and scarcities will disappear. The idea would not be to find a fair distribution of property for the poor, but just make sure everyone could get his or her hands on the lastest computer to be implanted in the brain or gene modifier or energy producer or super grains; then the meaning of "poor" evaporates.

Hey, I'm tired of politics anyway, so this will be fine with me.

Morris ends his book with a Kipling poem. Just like David Allen Coe's perfect country and western song with drunks and prisons and trains in it, a great history should end with a Kipling poem. Maybe it should have started with a poem by Robert Service, but I was thrilled to get to then end and find, "Oh, East is east and West is west..."

Ian Morris: Why the West Rules-for Now

2010-12-19T08:50:00.005-06:00

Ian Morris gives little examples of alternative history. What if, the Chinese had burned the Royal Navy, killed Admiral Nelson, sacked every town along the south coast of England made Queen Victoria a subject?

He then goes on to show why this could not have happened.

I like alternative histories as science fiction. You know, what if the South had won the civil war? What if the Greeks had lost to the Persians at Thermopylae? What if, the Germans had killed Hitler early in the war?-- that sort of thing.

I also like Morris' explanations about why everything became what it had to become, because of "maps, not chaps." He says, "Once we recognize that chaps (in large groups and in the new broader sense of the word) are all much the same, I will argue, all that is left is maps." His larger sense of the word "chaps" includes women, lower-class men and children.

Morris is an archaelogist and ancient historian, specializing in the classical Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE, so he takes his discussion further back in time than the modern historians. He offers a broad approach, "combining the historian's focus on context, the archaelogist's awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist's comparative methods." He got help from botanists, zoologists, chemists, geologists and other specialists. I think he might have also tossed in a philosopher, say Derk Pereboom, and a Neuroscientist, maybe Antonio Damasio, but nonetheless the result is extraordinary.

I have not yet reached the punchline, that is the part about "for Now." The book appears to be about 600 pages long. I'm reading it on the Kindle, so I don't know for sure, but it must be a hefty tome in hardback. Morris makes a joke about the length by quoting Samuel Johnson on Paradise Lost, "None ever wished it longer than it is."

So far, his book is for me like those of Jared Diamond (who he discusses), I hope just keeps going on.

Dr. Pangloss and the best of all possible worlds.

2010-12-19T07:48:00.002-06:00

I have been reading a book by Ian Morris called Why the West Rules--For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. I would usually want to finish a book, before making a comment, but this one is long and it is a keeper. It is a wonderful book; every page causes me to wonder about something. And it may be one of those sea change books that causes everything to look different once it is read. (I know, that sea change metaphor is hackneyed. The phrase always brings to mind for me, "Full fathom five thy father lies/ of his bones are coral made/ Those are pearls that were his eyes/ Nothing of him does fade/ but doth suffer a sea-change/ Into something rich and strange." So I keep using it.)

Morris quotes Voltaire: "'All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,' says Dr. Pangloss-again, and again, and again--in Voltaire's eighteenth-century comic classic Candide. Despite
contracting syphilis, losing an eye and an ear, and being enslaved, hanged, and caught in not one but two earthquakes, Pangloss sticks to his story. Pangloss, of course, was Voltaire's little joke, poking fun at the silliness of contemporary philosophy, but history has thrown up plenty of real-life versions."

I read an English translation of Candide, Or Optimism, I think as assigned reading, in high school and enjoyed the joke and was completely persuaded that Pangloss and Leibniz (who I did not, and have not, read) must have been complete idiots.

Now, because of Morris' book, it occurs to me that Dr. Pangloss may have been right, not about the optimism part, but because this is the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only possible world. This also, makes it the worst of all possible worlds, of course, but if everything had to turn out the way it does, there may be no reason with Dr. Pangloss to rejoice in the awful things going on around us, but there is little reason to be suprised or disappointed, either.

Free Will and St. Augustine: Liberum Arbitrium

2010-12-11T11:02:00.004-06:00

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words, "Man can indeed
do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants," accompany me in
all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others,
even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free
will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and
judging individuals, and from losing good humor. Albert
Einstein 1932.

A great deal of my free-pondering time has been devoted to the question of free will. I know this may not seem a question that matters in every day life, but I think it does. If there is no free will, the criminal justice system is founded on a false premise. If no one, when we look hard enough, acts intentionally or knowingly, but only as they must based on determinism, there is no basis for the mens rea that is usually required for punishment. Punishment itself is undermined. The whole federal guideline scheme based on "just deserts" is wrong. Criminal defense work apart, rejection of free will impacts how we interact with other folks in day to day life.

An anonymous comment to my last blog on "free will" refers to a Catholic Encyclopedia entry that affirms "free will." I take this response seriously. A great deal of my understanding of "free will" comes from Augustine, Aquinas and other Scholastics, and Pascal. However, I am persuaded none of these would embrace the modern concept of "free will" as we use the term and as we wield the term, as if it were a bludgeon, to kill our fellows. I say this in a quite literal since; a juror to whom I spoke after the verdict, justified his decision to kill with the term "free will."

The usual translation of "LIBERUM ARBITRIUM" into English is "free will." However, when Augustine writes of liberum arbitrium, he describes something very different from the excuse we today use to imprison and execute each other in the penal system. Augustine discusses liberum arbitrium in the Book V of "The City of God." Augustine leaves no doubt that the will or power of God determines everything in the world and that God knows what the future will be before hand. Augustine even reconciles himself with those who call it "fate." "If anyone attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language."

Augustine discusses the twins, Esau and Jacob, to show that astrology cannot be true. (My translation calls the astrologists "mathematicians.") They were born at the same time, but had completely different predetermined lives. Our question though is why one son was loved by his mother (and God), and the other was not, and whether either Esau or Jacob had any control over the outcome of their lives?

Augustine tells of those who believe in determinism, that is, those who believe those who believe fate is "the whole connection and train of causes which makes everything become what it does become" are not in disagreement with him, but merely in a verbal controversy, "since they attribute the s0-called order and connection of causes to the will and power of God most high, who is mostly rightly and most truly believed to know all things before they come to pass and to leave nothing unordained...."

Augustine qoutes verses of Annaeus Seneca, "The Fates do lead the man that follows willing: But the man that is unwilling, him they drag."

So then, if "the order and connection of causes" leaves nothing unordained, what room is there for Augustine for this thing, Liberum Arbitrium? To begin with, this word "will" which in Latin is "voluntas" and not "arbitrium" should probably be "decision" or "judgment" or "discernment." (Look at the franciscan-archive. org linked under the title).

God's will is something different, but in the Augustine writings regarding man, substitute the word "decision" for "will."

God creates the will of man. Augustine, says, "In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others."

And, "Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have...."

Our decisions are ruled by necessity, according to Augustine. "But if we define necessity to be that according to which we say that it is necessary that anything be of such or such a nature, or be done in such and such a manner, I know not why we should have any dread of that necessity taking away the freedom of our will."

So, I don't believe Augustine or the Church embrace what we today call "free will." Pascal devotes "Provincial Letters" to this argument and makes it much better than I can.

Thoughts About Free Will

2009-09-27T09:37:00.009-05:00

The first exposure I had to the determinism-free will discussion was in elementary school when we attended the Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, Texas. The argument was if God knows everything and is all-powerful, he knows ahead of time what we will do and he made us that way, so we can't really be making choices. Differently put, no one really chooses the next step in life if it has already been decided by an omnipotent, omniscient God.

As a little boy, intuitively, I thought I was making choices, but I also had a strong sense I was being tossed around by powers far greater than me.

Although Baptists tend to believe in Free Will, there has long been a Calvinist contingent among the Baptists:
"...the earliest Baptists were not Calvinists, even though they had their beginnings in a Calvinistic environment. It was a quarter of a century before Calvinist views appeared in Baptist life. Even then, for a considerable period of time there were two different groups of Baptists in England, General Baptists (non-Calvinistic) and Particular Baptists (Calvinistic). Later (1891) the two groups merged, but many congregations on both sides were suspicious of the merger and remained separate. In America, the first Baptist church (FBC of Providence, Rhode Island) had both Calvinists and non-Calvinists in its membership."

The big issue is whether God picked those who were going to hell and those going to heaven before birth.

We are long since Catholic converts, but that does not really resolve the issue, even though the Catechism now state,

"Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts."

The anti-Calvinist protestants accuse Calvin of having cribbed from the Catholic St. Augustine for a reliance on determinism. And The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (cited in the link) discusses the issue as far from settled. I discussed Pascal's falling out of favor with the powers of his day because of a Catholic belief in determinism.

Mostly now, people talk about biological and psychological determinism, but I think it is largely the same discussion as God's determinism.

My first exposure to this type of determinism was when I read Walden Two by B.F. Skinner when I was still in High School. I kept the intuition that I was making free choices, but I could not find an strong argument against Skinner's determinism.

In the decades since, I have seen little evidence that people have choice in life. At most, we have an illusion that we are making a choice, but that choice is determined by prior causes. Recently, I read Living Without Free Will by Derk Pereboom. He makes the case for "Hard Determinism" and "Hard Incompatibilism." That is, factors beyond our control produce all of our actions and this fact is incompatible with a belief we are praiseworthy or blameworthy for our actions.

If this is true (and Pereboom argues it as scientific fact), the implications for life and society are huge. For starters, it demonstrates our criminal justice system is based on a false premise.

Ice Will Suffice

2009-06-28T20:29:00.005-05:00

I was recently sitting with a friend watching the river. We were discussing how the world would end, or probably more accurately, how human beings would die out.

He urged, (correctly, I think) that it was inevitable we would blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons and the only question is when. I suggested, that although I have a prejudice in favor of people over other species, this might leave a pleasant enough world for smaller creatures. Chernobyl might be the pattern. The horses and cows died and the human beings left or died. But the lynx and the eagle owl may have made a comeback after homo sapiens left their habitat. Studies have shown plants like soy and certain rodents have evolved a tolerance for the radiation. So the large animals may all died, but plants and smaller animals may thrive.

But I don't think we will be around long enough for the nuclear destruction. The frogs are all dying. Apparently a species of frog that lived with a certain fungus was shipped around the world for scientific experiments. The fungus was fatal to other types of frogs and now all of the frogs are dying, all over the world.

There have been five mass extinctions before. A mass extinction is defined to mean half the species on earth have died. Now most of the scientists believe we are in mass extinction event number six. It may have begun only in the last few decades or it may have begun 50,000 years ago. A book called Twilight of the Mammoths by Paul S. Martin describes all the great animals in North America when human beings showed up. These include mastodons (a type of big elephant), gomphotheres (an elephant with a mouth like a shovel), four species of mammoths (hairy elephants), ground sloths, a glyptodon (sort of a living PT Cruiser with a mace for a tail), giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant peccaries, dwarf antelopes, native camels and horses, saber-toothed and dirk-tooth cats and an American subspecies of the lion. So maybe the frogs are almost an afterthought.

The problem, of course, if you are fond of certain human beings is that in these extinctions the big creatures tend to go, and we are a big creature. The earliest extinction lost a number of different types of trilobites and they are all gone now. It may be the sharks ate the rest of them. I don't understand this web of life that includes the frogs and how they help hold the whole together, but I imagine that without the frogs to eat the bugs, the bugs will eat our food and us. Also, it seems somewhat like the canary who dies in the cave before the miners start dying. The frogs dying may just be a signal the hole we are digging is filling with poisonous gases.

Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus

2009-03-19T17:28:00.005-05:00

Kindle books was giving away a Frankenstein novel for free and since I did not know if my debit card was exhausted or not, I opted to download and read it rather than various recommended best sellers. Especially for free, it was worth the purchase. And never before have I been more wrong about what I thought I knew about a book.

I thought I had read it before, but when I read it this time, since I did not recognize it all, maybe I never did. I was relying on snippets of a dozen bad movies for my recollection of the book.

Did you know there is no Igor? And Dr. Frankenstein is not an evil genius doctor at all, but a young college student who became over enthusiastic about his studies. And the scene is set in cheery Geneva, Switzerland, not in some Eastern European castle. And Victor Frankenstein does not flip a switch to turn on his creation, because he is still lighting up his studies with candles. Nor were there batteries that could hold the lightning for animating the creature. And Victor's Creation proves to be very intelligent. He educates himself so he can persuade others about his point of view.

The book is published in 1818. Mary Shelley had run away to Geneva with her then boyfriend, Percy Shelley, because if the creditors caught him in England, they would throw him in a debtor's prison. They had already scandalized society because Mary was pregnant and Percy was married to Harriet. Harriet later conveniently drown herself so Mary and Percy could marry. Mary became pregnant when she was 16 and Percy was 20. If this had happened today in Texas, Percy would probably be prosecuted for Rape of a Child.

At any rate, Mary and her stepsister Claire Clairmont and Percy and Lord Byron and John William Polidori all stayed for a while at Lord Byron's house on Lake Geneva. They were all telling ghost stories and out of that came Mary's Frankenstein. Polidori wrote the first vampire story to be published in English. Mary was 20 years old.

The title actually refers to the young student, Victor, and not his creation. Victor is The Modern Prometheus. That is, he steals fire from the gods, gives it to men and ends up being punished for eternity by having his liver eaten by an eagle, only to have it grow back and eaten again the next day. Victor creates life out of dead material. He has an understanding of watching the frog's leg jump and throw off a spark when it is touched with a scalpel. By giving man this fire, he has to watch as the run away creation kills everyone he loves.

Mary grew up and hung around with the best poets and philosophers of the time, so it is not surprising she used Luigi Galvani's experiments as the basis for bring the creature to life. Galvani thought animals were the source of the electricity.

Mary includes in her story, a false confession, a religious persecution of a muslim and the unintended consequences of the well-meaning scientist. This all seems up to date. Victor's creation wants a wife. Victor won't create one because he fears the offspring will be so much superior to people, they will soon replace people.

I suppose the genetic engineers are far enough along they could produce a creature bigger, stronger and smarter than people by tinkering with certain human genes. Maybe this should be required reading.

One thing I think Mary misjudged is that any creation could be so grotesque, no one would ever be able to look at it. But Mary was just 20 and hadn't learned yet that we can get used to about anything.

OK, if not US Attorney, how about county court at law judge?

2009-03-12T20:26:00.003-05:00

Still no word on the U.S. Attorney's office or the President's intentions along that line, so I remain unemployed. Perhaps my terms were too severe. Maybe we could put the office in Raymondville? Surely, Mr. President you do not expect me to go as far north Corpus Christi? At any rate, please do not feel rushed, my options are quite limited. One possibility, though is a race for county court at law.

The county court at law judgeship being vacated by Judge Robles and to which Judge Murray was appointed is of course in play. It appears the commissioners may have wanted a hot race, so I have to consider my obligation to help out.

The odds of me winning a race are negligible which is the only reason I would consider running. But to be fair, I better go ahead and let the voters know my requirements.

First, I'm not sure about this title, "Judge." Everybody from past and present who has ever been a city judge or a justice of the peace or U.S. Supreme Court Justice ends up being called "judge." I went to lunch recently and looked around the room and realized only the young woman serving the fideo and I could not claim to to be "Judge." Also, I would be unwilling to be called "Judge" for fear of the ultimate encounter with Someone who has the power to judge the quick and the dead.

I do call people by their titles, "Judge," "Father," "Doctor," especially when, in the pressure of the moment, I can't remember their names.

So for my title? "Your excellency," maybe. "Grand potentate?" After I saw a Robin Williams movie once, I tried to get the kids to call me, "O Captain, my Captain," but nobody would go along.

Now, how about clothes? Black robes never did much for me, except for prospect of being to wear pajamas underneath. On the other hand a powdered wig may be fun if the airconditioning is good enough.

Now to the practical part, I get stuck on the Mathew 7:1 stuff. So I really couldn't pass judgment on anyone. This means all those guys with the orange uniforms would likely get to go home. Besides, at the county court at law level, where everyone is accused of a misdemeanor, it is pretty hard to take many of those crimes seriously. Hot checks, DWI, possession of marihuana, prostitution, gambling, that sort of thing. "Go and sin no more." I've never heard a judge say that, but wouldn't it be fun to clear out a courtroom of defendants that way?

What about the civil cases? County court at law judges don't do divorces normally or injuctions, so that would save a lot of other unpleasantness. There are a fair share of car wreck cases. I believe my knowledge of insurance companies (contempt? disdain? scorn?) would make me especially "fair," in these cases.

This may not be so much a platform as a prediction of how things will go. Naturally, I would not bet on a second term or even surviving the first.

More likely, I'll make a bunch of push cards that say, "Experience, Integrity, Fairness," or "Justice for All," or "Character You Can Trust."

Who You Calling a Socialist?

2009-03-04T20:43:00.005-06:00

Harold Meyerson is a Washington Post opinion editor. In today's article (click on the title), he discusses all of this socialism talk. He says the only "democratic socialists" he's encountered in DC are Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont and himself. He says socialists don't want to nationalize industries anymore and Obama certainly isn't a socialist, but, like FDR, trying to save capitalism. And that the capitalist system is failing on its own.

The new, uncrowned head of the opposition, Rush Limbaugh, likes to call everyone a socialist. I wish Obama were a socialist, but it is clear to me he's not. I have a socialist bookkeeper and and a socialist barber, but I'm not sure they're out of the closet on the issue. So I think I can recognize a secret socialist and I just don't see it with Obama. Rush is welcome to call and discuss this with me if he likes.

If I had to choose between Bernie Sanders to run things and Rush, I'd take Bernie. But I don't want the government to take over the banks. I'd like to go back to the days when branch banking was illegal and you knew your banker. That way if he stole from you, he had to live next door or down the street and face you at the grocery store. And if he was real bad, people could get together and tar and feather him. But now banks are multi-headed hydra (with far more than the nine heads of the beast in Revelations) and much harder to kill. Maybe it would be best if banks were turned into 24 hour libraries and coffee shops. I don't want the government to take over the brokerage houses, but perhaps they could be converted into homeless shelters and public cafeterias. I don't want the government to take over insurance companies. I'm thinking ice cream parlors. Anyway, you get the idea.

I think if the government is to do anything, it should help poor people and not rich people, but I also think there are only rare periods in history when things work this way. Maybe we are entering one now. I hope so. But in general, I think the rich will in the long run always corrupt government.

I have tried to read the doctrinal battles of various flavors of socialists and I find them as complex and impenetrable as the Sicilian defense.

I like Big Bill Haywood, but I don't think he was really a socialist. He was an anarchosyndicalist rather than a socialist. He was in he Socialist Party of America for a while and campaigned for Eugene V. Debs, but Big Bill was too radical for the socialists and they tossed him out.

He was a bundle of other contradictions as well. He was strongly anti-war, but when a Pinkerton man came to arrest Big Bill, Big Bill shot him.

I also like Big Bill's view of contracts, especially labor contracts. He believed in industrial unions (that is, the whole industry rather than just trades, hence the Industrial Workers of the World) and not trade unions. Trade unions tended to be racist and snotty about workers further down the pecking order from them. Big Bill viewed most any contract for labor as a trap rather than a benefit for workers. As soon as it becomes unfair, the workers should all be able to walk off the job.

I am not sure what Big Bill would make of today's world and Obama. I am pretty sure he would not favor sending all of these soldiers to Afghanistan. I doubt he would have bailed out IAG, more likely shut it down.

Anyway, all you socialist-baiters, please be aware that socialists tend be calm, moderate people with whom you can negotiate and make contracts. Before this particular collapse of capitalism is all over, and before the remains of the middle class is completely beat into submission, you may be wishing for more socialists.

Who were America's best and worst presidents?

2009-03-03T18:12:00.007-06:00

Who was the best president in my lifetime? In history?

These types of questions are asked a lot just now because Bush has shown himself to so appallingly bad and now we are teased with the possibility that Obama may be good.

So what does it take to be a good president? I've never agreed when the presidential historians make their rankings. Sort of like picking a good coach, it would seem we should have some ratings based on success. Success would seem to involve inflicting the least misery on the populace.

Two quick examples. Lincoln and FDR seem to be at the top of everybody's list, especially the historians (I've attached a link if you click on the title). I question this. Consider, would you want to live your life during the tenures of Lincoln and FDR of those of Jimmy Carter and Warren G. Harding?

If 620,000 people died in Civil War during Lincoln's tenure and 408,000 died under FDR, neither one would really be in the running. I'm not saying either caused their wars, I'm saying that the high misery index was on their watch and we can hardly give them top historical rankings, any more than we declare a losing coach the best just because he did not have good players.

Harding was only president for a couple of years, so I think FDR should be able to misery average, so his war deaths are spread over four terms. But even at that, Harding comes out pretty good (certainly better than Woodrow Wilson with WWI and 117,000 deaths on his account). So although Harding usually gets ranked as one of the worst, the only deaths to mar his service would come from the China Yangtze service that resulted in 5 deaths over a period of 20 years, and apparently none during his tenure. And he gets credit for pardoning Eugene V. Debs and releasing him from prison. This increased the happiness index for Debs and a lot of nervous socialists.

Jimmy Carter gets blamed only for 8 deaths in Iran during his tenure. And he gets credit for the Vietnam War draft dodger amnesties, this increased the happiness index for about 100,000 men who got to come home.

I don't think war deaths or pardons should be the only measures. I think the misery index should include unemployment and inflation (granted, Jimmy may get into trouble here). Percentage of the population in poverty or prison, health of the nation, numbers of work injuries, life expectancy, alcoholism, drug addiction, education are all areas that would make a good rating under a happiness/misery index.

Better historians than I am can help straighten this out, but I think it is a better system than "leadership qualities" that seem to have no concern for the numbers of countrymen who are butchered, impoverished and jailed.

Next President's Day, think of Warren and Jimmy.

The New US Attorney

2009-02-15T20:33:00.005-06:00

I don't think we have a new appointment for US for the Southern District. I heard some names floated and had heard that DA Armando Villalobos wants the job.

I doubt Armando would really be happy in the job and if he reconsiders and no one else wants the job (which I can understand)we may be short on candidates. So, I am considering stepping up to the plate.

This is not as completely far-fetched as my friends may think. It is true I've never been a prosecutor for philosophical, even religious, reasons, and that I don't believe in punishment as a goal of the criminal justice system. But my naysaying friends should consider three facts: 1. I could use the salary. 2. I was an early Obama supporter (after it became clear Kucinich would not get on the ballot). 3. I am an old buddy of Congressman Doggett (though I will deny this if it should ever become a campaign issue against him, like with that Chicago college teacher) and Doggett apparently is collecting the names for the selection process.

However, I must throw my hat in the ring with certain reservations. First, the office has to be moved to downtown Brownsville. I suffer from motion sickness when I go north of Ruben Torres Blvd. I think it has to do with the speed at which the earth spins at different latitudes.
Also, I don't think I could get anyone to loan me the money to buy a house in Houston and my credit's not good enough to rent. Although I like the concept of a homeless US Attorney and the empathy that may produce for the poor immigrant being prosecuted, I don't see how I could meet the federal court dress code of "dressing with dignity" while sleeping in a dumpster. Also, Kathy would probably complain.

Second, there are certain types of prosecutions that I can't do and I would have to take the appointment with the understanding we would dump these types of cases. Basically, these are the prosecutions that I believe come out of class warfare of the rich against the poor, North against South, and all those other nasty splits in society. I think immigration prosecutions are immoral, so those would have to go. That, of course, would put an end to immigrant transporting cases.

I think the war on drugs is really a war on poor people, so I would dump those prosecutions as well. If the drug trade goes so will the gun trade, for the most part.

That pretty well limits the prosecutions to Mexican shark fishermen and bad xerox copies of $20.00 bills. As worrisome as those crimes are to the Republic, I think we can probably squeak by with just me and a good secretary. This should save a lot of money.

Of course, I don't have the energy to mount a campaign on my own without risk of cutting into the afternoon naps, but if you think this is a good plan, I await the groundswell.

Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin

2009-02-12T09:15:00.004-06:00

Today is 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. No doubt the national holiday will be called before the day is over.

I read the Autobiography and the Voyage of the Beagle many years ago and I have "read at" Origin, Descent and Expression of Emotions of Man and Animals. This last, the Expression of Emotions, I think is still important even with all the recent research.

Darwin wrote before the discovery of genes. Although he was a contemporary of Gregor Mendel, Mendel's work was lost until the 20th Century (Mendel was an abbot and his successor burned his papers). Somehow, even before genes and long before the human genome project, he managed to get it right.

What a great century the 19th Century was! Except for the United States and the Civil War, it was one of the more peaceful centuries. Inflation was low. And it produced Darwin, Freud and Marx. Of these three, I think Darwin has best survived modern discoveries, but it is quite an impressive collection.

To me the towering genius of the last thousand years is Tolstoy and he came out of the 19th Century, but Tolstoy was not writing science, so he was less likely become obsolete than Darwin.

I love the Darwin-Wallace story. I suspect I would like Wallace more than Darwin; not as stuffy, I'd guess. And more mod est on the struggle for scientific recognition. More likely to go native. More socialistic.

But I also like a detail guy and Darwin was sure one for details. And all these years later, even if the subject is vegetable mold, he is a delight to read.

When Austin was in High School at St. Joseph's, he was hoping to get a rise out of the Brothers by putting one of those Darwin Fishes on his car. I told him, "Fine, but read the Autobiography first, so if someone asks you about it, you won't be stump ignorant." I think it had a civilizing affect on the boy. If reading Darwin will temper male adolescence, what other cures might be in store.

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin and here's to the next 200 years.

Election tropes

2008-11-08T09:08:00.005-06:00

Only because of victory, the election now seems good to me. Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. (metaphor)

The Republican ticket had begun to sound like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. (simile)

And especially to Bush, I say Take thy face hence. (synedoche)

With Bush bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and the suits on Wall Street walking off with everyone's 401K's the results of the election were a no-brainer. (metonymy).

Is Mr. Bush a Christian? Christians believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in profits and how to get a piece of them. HIs policies are sound, nothing but sound. (antanaclasis).

When Bush spoke to us he raised neither his voice nor our hopes. He should have fixed the problems, not the blame. Now we hold our breath and the door for his exit. (syllepsis).

I've been Republicaned all I can stand this election year. The whole country has been punked by this administration. And thus, until the change of administration, the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. (anthimeria).

How did we win? The big man upstairs must have heard our prayers. This socialism attack on Obama was misplaced. Just as was once said to Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy," we can say to Barack Obama, "Senator, you're no Eugene Debs." Would that he were. (periphrasis).

These last months of a Bush administration may be brutal. He forgets: Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people. (prosopesis)

There did not seem to be brains enough in the oval office, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with. After the market fell and unemployment climbed, people moved slowly. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of our own neighborhoods. (hyperbole).

Bush has left the nation somewhat worse for wear. During his administration, I saw Lady Liberty flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her physical appearance. (litotes)

What could the Republicans have been thinking? Have we not eyes? have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? (rhetorical question).

And so they brought us more wars. And our young people learned proud privileges as were learned by a young man of an earlier generation: "By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene might be his." (irony)

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke. (onomatopoeia)

O miserable abundance. O beggarly riches. (oxymoron)

They led the people by following the mob. They lied to tell their truth. (paradox)

Election schemes

2008-11-07T07:22:00.005-06:00

Readers true, friends: (apposition).

Finally the election is over--a fair field full of fury. (alliteration).

The Republicans now suffer, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us. (anadiplosis).

And now for some fairness in society: I say, don't hold back. Strike as I would. Have struck those tyrants! Strike deep as my curse! Strike! and but once (anaphora).

How the last eight years have seemed to me: The helmsman steered; the ship moved on; yet never a breeze up blew. (anastrophe).

All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful. (antimetabole).

Response to paliniacs: Not that I loved Caesar less', but that I loved Rome more. (antithesis).

Now they seek That solitude which suits abstruser musings. (assonance).

We must... hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. (asyndeton, chiamus)

May we find all of this Republicanism ...Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour. (climax- the noun, not the verb).

Republicans leaving DC: What is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? (epanalepsis).

Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued. (epistrophe).

To the rovians and paliniacs: Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. (hyperbaton).

And the louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons. (isocolon).

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. (parallelism).

I’ve had to resist and to attack sometimes – that’s only one way of resisting – without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. (parenthesis)

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself. (polyptoton)

I spent several days and nights in early November with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. (polysendeton).

American Death Penalty-Part 1

2008-11-04T11:38:00.001-06:00

Once upon a time, even before the United States was a country, we had a death penalty. To some extent it existed in the northern colonies to punish religious heretics and witches and the like, but for the most part it was in the southern colonies to help enforce slavery. Many things related to slavery were capital crimes including helping slaves escape and inciting slaves to run away. Even to this day, the slave states are where we find most of the executions.

The English Bill of Rights in 1691 had prohibited cruel and unusual punishment and then the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 saying about the same thing. This was not meant to end the death penalty though, but only torture before causing death. Also, although states had their own prohibitions against cruel or unusual punishment, this part of the Eighth Amendment did not originally apply to the states. The Supreme Court in In Re Kemmler in 1889 rejected an argument that the 8^th Amendment applied to the New York when this state started electrocuting people to kill them.

Finally, in the case of Robinson v. California in 1962 the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment was applied to the states, but this was not a death penalty case, but prohibited imprisoning Mr. Robinson just because he was a drug addict and had needle tracks in his arms. But we get ahead of the story.

The historical link between slavery and the death penalty held sway as the northern states moved into a period of reforming the death penalty before the civil war. The southern states saw a need to discipline a captive workforce and had no similar reform movement. The racist purpose for capital punishment was openly discussed. This situation became a national embarrassment when the racism in using the death penalty became an international incident when the Scottsboro Boys were sentenced to death. When the seven young black men accused of rape were given the death penalty, essentially without lawyers and with little evidence, the nature of the American death penalty was given an international stage. The Supreme Court in 1932 decided the case of Powell v. Alabama. There were many glaring problems with the sentence, but the court found a way to correct the embarrassment of this one case without greatly impacting the system of using the threat of death to control an oppressed caste. The Court did not say a capital defendant should always have a lawyer, but that in a capital case where the defendant is unable to employ counsel and is incapable of adequately making his own defense because of ignorance, feeble-mindedness, illiteracy or the like, he should get a lawyer.

Grief

2008-10-26T21:15:00.008-05:00

I have dream conversations with the dead. This afternoon as I slept, it was with Joe, now dead for eight years. It was as real as if he had been sitting across the table from me, dominoes in play.

Sometimes the conversations go back more than thirty years to my father, drinking Seagrams Seven disguised in a carton of milk.

The dreams are always pleasant and exciting while I sleep and then unsettling when I wake up; they wake me up.

"For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in a snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them."

Joe talking to me with an accent and grammar, now nearly extinct, that was once on both sides of Red River, with an understanding of a hard scrabble life I never had to experience.

The grief by a mother who had lost a son as described by the preacher: "But her hope drew a veil before her sorrow, and though her grief was great enough to swallow her up, yet her love was greater and did swallow up her grief."

And as the doctor, the cracked archangel, says, "...the long habit of living indisposith us for dying.

How many dead?

2008-10-19T21:41:00.006-05:00

How many Iraqis have been killed in the invasion? This is apparently not easily answered. President Bush said 30,000 in December of 2005. As large as this number is when tallying deaths, it was wildly inconsistent with a Lancet medical journal article of October 2006 that estimated 655,000 deaths as a result of war, with 601,000 of these from violence in war. This estimate was based on a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University.

After President Bush gave his 30,000 estimate Scott McClellan said on his behalf there was no official tally and Bush had gotten his number from the media. The Lancet article is a peer reviewed article using the type of national, cross-sectional cohort study of death used to find out how many people die from TB or malaria.

A group called Iraqi Body Count keeps a running tally that estimates today 88,373 to 96,466. Iraq Body Count uses reports from morgues and hospitals to produce their numbers. Lancet medical journal discusses the problem of relying on reports. When a whole family is killed there are often no reports made and some areas have stopped issuing death certificates at all.

The World Health Organization recently issued an estimate of 151,000.

However many the number may be, all guesses seem to concur that most of the deaths are civilians and many are children. Lancet estimates include children under 14, women and people over 65 years of age. One measure of percentage of deaths who are civilians can be based on the reports of Iraqi military deaths-between 4900 and 6375 according to WHO.

These numbers do not include the American deaths, some 3,915 according to WHO, or the 174 British forces killed.

Lancet stated, "In Iraq, as with other conflicts, civilians bear the consequences of warfare. In the Vietnam war, 3 million civilians died; in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conflict has been responsible for 3.8 million deaths; and an estimated 200,000 of a total population of 800,000 died in conflict in East Timor. Recent estimates are that 200,000 people have died in Darfur over the past 31 months. We estimate that almost 655,000 people--2.5% of the population in the study area--have died in Iraq. Althou such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st Century."

A group called Just Foreign Policy posts a running extrapolation from the Lancet study that states the number of deaths at 1,273,378 as of today.

At some point an ocean of blood takes us beyond the ability to imagine. If the estimates of the number of deaths based on a Lancet study are correct, the death toll would have spilled some 6,500,000 quarts of blood. It only takes 600,000 quarts to fill an olympic size pool. Think of a thousand olympic pools filled with blood, and then it all begins to overflow and run out onto the ground. Irrigating what? What grows from this?

Democrats and the Invisible Hand

2008-10-12T20:42:00.009-05:00

Wealth … is like a snake; it will twist around the hand and bite unless one
knows how to use it properly. – Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor,” 3.6.34

What if Obama is elected and the Democrats win the House and a super majority of 60 in the Senate to prevent filibuster? What might the government look like then?

The odds makers only give one chance in four for a 60 seat working majority, so we are not likely to face this prospect. If it happened, would the Democrats take the opportunity and make major changes in government?

Jimmy Carter had a 60 vote majority to work with and did little with it. Clinton never had the majority, but he was determined to disappoint in any case.

Still, I will do my small part. I'll vote for Obama although the electoral college pretty well assures it is a futile vote in Texas. I'll vote for Noriega. I'll vote for Solomon. But I know we need something bigger.

What I want from the Democrats is an escape from the profit-motive, the afan de lucre, that I believe wrecks human relations and corrupts society.

American politics suffers the grip of the invisible hand about the throat. I've several times tried to wade through Wealth of Nations and I still regard Adam Smith warmly. I do believe the Butcher, the Baker and the Brewer provide benefit to one another by acting out of self interest, but, profit, as a religion, has done a great disservice to Adam Smith. Adam Smith would be shocked by the misuse of his work today, just like Jesus would be shocked by what passes for Christianity.

I do not acknowledge that greed is the best glue to bind society.

"Don't you believe in profit?" Or, "what's wrong with making a profit?" is now the universal conversation stopper. When the war profiteer or the storm price gouger or (most recently) the CEO who has just shut down his company with a golden parachute gets caught, he says pompously, "You do believe in profit, don't you?"

My answer is "No." Profit is nothing more than unjustly withheld wages. Or over-charged clients. Or cheated vendors.

How might we escape this invisible hand? I don't think we can change human nature. But I do believe we can recognize greed for what it is. It is not a virtue; it is a sin.

Texas 45 Oklahoma 35

2008-10-11T14:45:00.006-05:00

When I called today to see if Randall had offed himself, he told me the Texas-Oklahoma game was on. This coincided nicely with my desire for a meal, so I walked over to the Palm Lounge.

First, the restaurant critique. Two cheeseburgers, french fried and the jalapeno peppers are pound for pound or dollar for dollar the best meal I have found (about $10). Ceviche at the Mariscos de las Almas Perdidas in Matamoros runs a close second, but for this review, I am not including international cuisine. Two cheeseburgers is about half a cheeseburger too many, but one cheeseburger is too few, so I recommend getting two and then stopping at the Walgreens for the Value Size Calcium Rich Antacid Tablets Ultra Strength, Assorted Fruit for dessert. The Coca-Cola in the can rated on color, nose and palate was undistinguished. The abdang somewhat harsh. However, I do not judge the cheeseburger by the Coke and next time I'll drink water or smuggle in a glass of milk.

Now to the game. When Randall told me he was not going to commit suicide, but rather finish the game, I decided to watch the end of the game. This was my second since 1969, but then Texas was No. 1 (after Slippery Rock, as I recall) and now was No. 5. Oklahoma was No. 1. I do not know the names of any of the players, but no credentials were required for admission into the Palm Lounge.

I called my Primo Jerry to see if he wanted to go, but he was not home, so I guessed I could catch him there anyway. As you age and your friends all die, you impose on relatives more and more, even distant relatives. Jerry was not home or so said whoever answered his phone.

Palm Lounge was full of fans, many wearing orange T-shirts and Longhorn caps, so I decided to root for my alma mater. I recognized an old acquaintance across the bar, but did not approach him, because so few people from years past recognized me in this aged, grey, bald, fat incarnation.

I arrived in time to whoop and holler as Texas pulled ahead and then scored again.

Bailout

2008-10-05T18:58:00.006-05:00

The problem with the Bailout Issue is that so few of us have the tools to understand the issue. I consulted Brownsville's resident Marxist economist and although he generally opposed the principles of the bill, he would not render an opinion because he lacked the information. And he has a PhD or some such degree in economics from a school in France, where, he tells me, all the economics teachers are Marxists. But if he lacks the information to give me advice, how can I come to a conclusion?

I have not read the three page version, much less the 450 page version, nor am likely to do so. Nevertheless, I'm going to take a position against it. The only candidate I can find who opposes the bill who I can vote for is Noriega, but I would have voted for him anyway. Cornyn, Hutchinson, McCain and Obama all voted for the bill.

Solomon Ortiz first voted against the Bailout and then voted for it. Four who voted against the Bailout in the final version were Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Lloyd Doggett and Russ Feingold.

On this issue, I trust Kucinich, Sanders, Doggett and Feingold more than I do McCain, Obama, Clinton, Cornyn and Ortiz.

I have been receiving e-mails telling me the Bailout is Marxist and socialist. However, all my socialist blogs and magazines are against it. Acorn and Jesse Jackson are against it. My question is, if it is socialism, why is the only socialist in Congress, Sanders, against it? Why is the Socialist Worker against it? Why are all the crypto-socialists against it?

So I join the Republican Congressmen and Uncle Tiger in opposing the Bailout bill. It's too late now, of course, we have lost. But this issue will raise it's head again.

I am as afraid of depression, soup kitchens and bread lines as anyone. The problem is, on this issue, I don't trust our party leaders, Democrat or Republican.

Will President Obama End the War?

2008-09-21T18:45:00.007-05:00

I just heard Obama on a 60 Minutes interview avow that his first executive action would be to call together the Joint Chiefs of Staff and develop a plan to end the war in Iraq. He used plenty of qualifiers like "safely" to describe how the war would be ended. I hope he means to end the war and the qualifiers don't stretch the war out another four or eight years.

I plan to vote for Obama if I'm still above ground in November. The first reason I voted for him in the primary election was that I thought he was the candidate most likely to end the war, at least after it was clear Dennis Kucinich would not be on the ballot.

But I think we must be clear that voting is not a substitute for anti-war organizing, argument, protest or war resistance. There is profit in war and, therefore, almost never can there be a political solution. Public opposition to war can bring a Republican war to an end. Without opposition, the Democrats may well wage war without end. The structural incentives for war are too tempting for any party in power to resist.

If popular opinion really mattered in policy to end war, the 2006 elections should have made a difference, but they didn't.

This is the first time in two years I have thought the Democrats might win the 2008 election. I have dreading, but predicting, a McCain victory since last summer when he was still in the tank in the polls. I thought he would beat Hillary in November. The main factor I misjudged was Obama's internet fund raising. I thought by now a Republican propaganda machine would have dumped a half a billion dollars smearing anyone who had the misfortune to get the Democratic nomination. If Obama ends October spending more money than McCain the smearing is neutralized, or at least equalized. The other factor appears to be the timing of the collapse of capitalism for this September. I am not sure that is what is happening, but whatever is going on, it can't be good for Republicans. Even with McCain now making noises like Paul Sweeney, it seems incredible that anyone would believe him.

Back to Obama and the war. With a McCain presidency the need for an anti-war movement was clear (if the war is ever to end). With an Obama presidency, we should know by the end of January if the war will end. If not, the anti-war community should not give him a break because he is a Democrat.

Ed Talks Money Management

2008-09-15T18:48:00.004-05:00

For only the sixth time in its history, the Dow Jones lost more than 500 points today, dropping about 3% of its value. This is small potatoes compared to Black Monday in which it lost 22% of its value in 1987. Some of the other big drops were related to political fears such as the outbreak of War in Europe in 1914 and the 9-11 attack in 2001.

I called the children and assured them that we had lost not one penny in the crash, so I see no great change in the ability to pay tuition. We didn't lose anything on Black Monday in 1987, either. In fact, we haven't had any stocks since the kids were young in the early eighties.

I was born with stock. My grandmother used to say, "There are shanty town Irish and silk stocking Irish, but we're stock and bond Irish." She also used to tell me the first investment was in education, because when the market crashed, no one could take away the education.

I got rid of the stock I had inherited (and the very little I bought on my own) because I was suing corporations. I did not want any issue that I had a conflict of interest by keeping stock in companies I may want to sue. Beyond that, an incipient ill-informed Marxism made it harder and harder for me to own that stock.

I was a naive quite conservative Texas Democrat when I showed up in Chile in 1972. ITT's involvement in undermining and eventually murdering Salvador Allende was a story that unfolded both while I was there and then over the years. It was not the sort of thing to give you a warm and cuddly feeling about the corporations, and this was before I heard of the likely Heinrich Himmler connection to ITT. The more I saw of corporations, the more absolutely evil they looked to me. Union Carbide and the Bhopal disaster pretty well sealed it in 1984.

Besides, I've always managed to spend about 110% of my income, no matter how high or low it is. It is helpful to be morally opposed to investing in stock when you can't make yourself save money anyway.

The kids are well-educated, though. So today I am gratified that I have not taken the foolish course of investing for retirement or our old age. Nothing ventured, nothing lost.

Sarah Palin--We've Done Worse

2008-09-06T23:34:00.013-05:00

I like this Sarah Palin choice. Of course, I won't vote for her. After all, she has confessed publicly to being a Republican. But that aside, she rests well with me.

All those things McCain says about himself like "maverick" and "independent" that were probably true about him long, long ago, before he married into all that money and then got caught up in the Keating Five mess, may still be true about Palin.

First, is experience really necessary for the presidency or any other position of power? I think choosing Congressmen based on who last won a multimillion dollar lottery in the district would be a good idea. I think judges should be chosen randomly, a big drawing, say on the courthouse steps with ping ping balls, among the lawyers qualified to serve. One big national drawing, with many, many ping pong balls, to choose the president based on all eligible voters would work for me.

Sarah Palin is about as close to a randomly selected candidate as we could get without throwing 250 million ping pong balls in a giant hamster cage. She far more represents our demographics that the traditional rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones vs. rich, white, male, Yale, Skull and Bones that was inflicted upon us in 2004.

She is a woman. This is good. The six years, six colleges including a junior college is endearing to me as well. I like the basketball playing, the moose hunting, the beauty pageants and the marihuana sampling. I like this messy bundle of kids of all ages and the Eskimo husband. I also like that she drove everybody nuts when she got elected Governor. I feel like I could be related to her or maybe she was the type of girl who could have had a thing with Uncle Tiger when he was a football star in high school.

I see her as a wild, loose cannon who is too new and too little connected to be controlled. I saw Huckabee much the same way. If she can become president quickly rather than waiting until the lobbyists have an opportunity to give her some "experience," she could prove to be a surprising treat and a nightmare for the oligarchy.

I know she presents herself as an anti-environmentalist and a war-monger, but we seem to get those characteristics no matter who we elect.

There are the only a couple of things that give me pause:

1. I fear she doesn't believe in dinosaurs. There are ways to reconcile dinosaurs with creationism and she may have decided upon one, but so far I cannot find it on the internet. This should be her first major policy statement. I would like a president who believes in dinosaurs.

2. I still haven't heard if she has read Shakespeare and the Bible. I understand that you can get a degree in journalism and miss these things. Also, I don't mean reading the Bible in that "verse for a day" sort of way that you get at Sunday School. I would like to think she has struggled with people like Lot, Onan and sick, crazy old David. If she has not, rather than wasting a bunch of time with Joe Lieberman being "briefed," I urge she head out to the tundra with the Collected Works and that big Bible on the coffee table.

We could do, and usually have done, worse.

The Bundlers and Predicting Presidential Elections

2008-09-06T16:07:00.009-05:00

Last summer when McCain's star had fallen, I had a feeling he would still win the presidency based on articles I was reading about his campaign support. Early in Bush's second term, I began to read McCain had lined up the "Bush Bundlers." The three best sources I have found for following the money are The Economist, The Financial Times, both conservative London newspapers filled with ads for expensive wristwatches and the International Socialist Review (no wristwatch ads at all). The ISR quotes the Economist and the Financial Times often. All three magazines seem to focus on the same information and believe the same subjects to be important. I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

At any rate, last summer, because these three sources assumed the race would be between McCain and Clinton and that McCain would ultimately win, I accepted this view. And I have discovered the more I ignore issues, personalities, polls and the like and just watch the money, the better are my predictions. Of course issues, personalities and polls can influence how much money a candidate receives, but the flurry of daily excitement about who has photos in drag and who has used cocaine and whose teenager is pregnant may impact polls, but money straightens all of that out.

I don't think McCain won the primaries because of his extraordinary personal story. He had this same extraordinary story when he ran in the primaries against George W. (whose personal story is like Prince Hal's, but without the heroic ending) and it did him little good then.

Also, it is not nearly as important how much money you have as how much you know you will get. That is why, when McCain was broke last summer, if he really had lined up the bush bundlers, we knew he would pull through.

So how did we go wrong on Clinton and why is Obama still alive even after the traditional August mauling designed by Lee Atwater? My feeling is that bundlers are less of the picture this time around.

For now, the bundler contributions to Obama and McCain are about even-- $75 million for McCain and $63 million for Obama. Obama though has raised a total of $390 million to McCain's $175 million. This Obama tally is a huge number. Bush spent $367 million in 2004. The difference is Obama has received half of his money in contributions of $200 or less and McCain has received only 25%. And Obama has twice as many small contributors, 187,000 to McCain's 94,000.

I suspect McCain will get a big contribution boost in these last two months before the election. I still think McCain will be able to spend more in 2008 than Bush did in 2004. Also, "independent groups" will muddy the waters and the RNC had about $70 million to spend at the beginning of July. Some of the more disgusting campaign contributors will time the money for the last month so it does less damage to their candidate by being disclosed after the election. Look for a couple of hundred million being spent to remind us that Obama is part Negro (not in those words, of course, but the message will be clear) in the next two months.

In Praise of Idleness

2008-08-17T16:08:00.005-05:00

If I were around to advise myself when I was young I would have urged myself to relax, take a little more time, don't work so hard. I would have encouraged my young self to finish college later, start law school later, travel more, study languages for a while. I would have tried to get myself to drive less expensive vehicles (if any at all) and definitely not buy any houses.

I would try to send myself to St. John's College in Santa Fe where my son went instead of rushing through UT. I would tell myself to go to Thurgood Marshall Law School where my daughter goes, instead of UT Law.

I would try to keep myself from running for any office (I ran twice) and not get involved in anyone else's campaign. I would tell myself to avoid politics.

There are also a number of clients and lawsuits I would advise against. Life is too short.

Of course, I probably would not have listened. All of that ambition came from somewhere and I lacked the wisdom to let it go. Not that it has come to much. That is the trick, of course. Dr. Faustus and many of us sell to this devil and then what we get in return is a bag of tricks.

Why has my life been so plagued with work ethic? From where springs this foolish notion that work and achievement should have value?

Does anyone talk about Max Weber any more? Once we could safely blame the work ethic on Protestantism. Also, we talked about cold weather, warm weather differences. The Puritans who went to the Caribbean were said to be soon happily munching tropical fruits in leisure while their New England cousins worked hard to prepare for the winter. We talked about the ant and the grasshopper. Why in the world did I ever want to be an ant? Or for that matter someone who lived where there are winters? Or even a Protestant?

Now there is a modern proponent of Idleness. Tom Hodgkinson has a magazine, blog and book. The blog is called The Idler. http://idler.co.uk/

My I especially recommend the quotes he has posted in the left hand corner of each page.

Siesta

2008-08-13T20:08:00.006-05:00

Thank goodness I got my nap in today. I haven't always managed to get a daily nap, but those periods of overly ambitious co-counsel or judges are part of the wastelands of my life, looking back. The productive periods, the joyful periods, the sane periods have all included the afternoon nap.

My Grandpa Casebier climbed down from his tractor and took a nap every day. Grandma Casebier called him lazy for the sixty-plus years he did so.

In the early 80's, I tried a workers' compensation case in front of an elderly judge who broke each day at noon. Now it is true the "two day trial" lasted a week, but I still think the quality of justice was higher than usual. My opposing counsel was not rested; he complained all week and drove an hour back to his office to work the rest of the day. I took a nap and a swim and read over the work for the next day. I recommend this approach to the judiciary; most of the rest of the week after a two day trial is needed for recovery anyway.

I love nap stories. When George McGovern called LBJ to ask Johnson for advice in his campaign for the presidency after McGovern won the democratic nomination, Johnson told him to take nap in his pajama's every day.

I was discussing naps with Dan Boyd today. (We once were young enough we talked about girls, then politics, then law and now naps-are these the passages in life?). Dan relates John Kenneth Galbraith nap stories. Galbraith who died at 97 took daily naps, even during busy periods such as when he was John Kennedy' ambassador to India. President Lyndon Johnson called Galbraith during a nap and Galbreath's housekeeper refused to interrupt his nap.

So do naps help you live longer? I don't know, but I like this quote:

The recent study following nearly 24,000 people for on average 6 years found that those who regularly took midday naps were nearly 40% less likely to die from heart disease than non-nappers. Researchers suggested siestas might protect the heart by reducing stress hormones levels. They found "people who took at least three naps per week lasting 30 minutes or longer had a 37% reduced risk of death from heart disease than their non-napping counterparts. Those subjects who occasionally took short naps lasting less than half an hour had a 12% lower risk than people who never napped... The results suggest that taking naps might be
just as important to protecting the heart as other measures, he says, including eating right and taking cholesterol-lowering drugs... http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/292/1/E253

My friend Paul, the Lebanese Arabic Scholar, regularly slips away for his naps. He seems to me one of the saner guys in either courthouse.

Apparently there is some contrary evidence. Retirees who sleep a lot during the day don't seem to do very well.

But over all, nappers appear to be more productive, healthier, happier and longer lived than non-nappers. Of course there is a difference between causation and correlation. It may be that people who are productive and happy, give themselves a break and take a nap. It may be that those who work in the meat packing plants and field labor and other hazardous jobs don't get a chance to nap.

What is the downside to spending all that time napping? I hear plenty of anecdotes about super-achievers who slept three hours a night for a lifetime and used every waking hour to do things like cure cancer, write the great American novel or win the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe so.

My sense, though, is that no normal lifespan is really long enough to accomplish much. Certainly, not without extraordinary skills (I may have some, but they have not yet surfaced in the first 57 years). So, barring the tyranny of man or circumstance, I'll be napping every day at about 3 pm.

State Subsidized Usury and the End of the Republic

2008-08-11T20:35:00.006-05:00

Although many things may batter this poor former Republic, I think usury may deliver the fatal blow. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who swung through the revolving door from Goldman Sachs now proposes a $300 billion promise to save Fannie Mae stock prices by having the government buy up the stock. This drops decades of right wing propaganda that markets make wiser decisions than governments right down the toilet, but likely few will notice.

William Greider advocates solutions in the most recent issue of The Nation. One is: "Nationalize Fannie Mae and other government-supported enterprises instead of coddling them. Restore them to their original status as nonprofit federal agencies that provide a valuable service to housing and other markets. Make the investors eat their losses. Buy the shares at 2 cents on the dollar. Without a federal guarantee, these firms are doomed anyway."

Another I like is: "Re-enact the federal law against usury.... Maybe in the deepening crisis, Washington will begin to grasp that money is also a moral issue."

Money is a moral issue. Probably the most important.

Anyone who has ever sat down at a poker table knows that the guy with the biggest bankroll can dominate the game. That is why tournaments set the amount to buy into the game. That is why the kitchen table player does not want to accidentally wander into a game where everyone else has a fat bankroll. The kitchen table player may know the exact odds of drawing to the flush in a given hand and be the most skilled player in the room, but if everyone else has a lot more money, he likely won't last long enough to show he's better.

Every poor guy trying to get a house or a car or groceries until the next check is completely at the mercy of the lender with the big bankroll. Especially when, as now, that lender can also buy up enough influence to be able to take the poor guys' taxes to replenish his bankroll if the lender makes a mess of things.

Over time, the people with money who will lend it out for interest will eventually get everyone else's money. Societies must build in a correction. Moral societies must prohibit lending for interest and have periodic forgiveness of debts.

On this cycle of government sponsored extortion and usury leading to debt slavery and wage slavery, we have only begun to see how bad things can get. People have maxed out the credit cards and are upside down on houses and cars. People have borrowed all there is to borrow on the next pay check. It will get ugly.

Can there every really be a Chigurh?

2008-08-10T07:59:00.008-05:00

Are there any Anton Chigurh's in real life? Anton Chigurh, the villain in No Country for Old Men, is now and newly one of my favorite villains ever.

My first is still Alex from Clockwork Orange: Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!

Isn't Burgess' invented argot great? I especially liked the (I believe more realistic) novel version of Clockwork Orange in which Alex and his three droogs just get too old and tired for the foolishness.

So, Alex is still my favorite, but Chigurh is high on the list. Up there with Hannibal.

And of course I liked the movie, No Country for Old Men. So these musings are not criticism. This is the type of movie of which I will watch ten minute snippets for a long time during sessions of mind-numbing channel surfing.

But can Chigurh really live outside of the movies or is he more like Superman and Batman and Shrek? That is, possible, perhaps, but highly unlikely.

I have never run into anyone remotely like Chigurh. The murderers I have known have been more sad than frightening.

I have raised this question many times since seeing the movie. There is a certain type of response in which the answerer will nod sagely and with a certain sympathy and contempt for my naivete assure me that human evil has no bounds and Chigurhs are all around us.

I doubt it though. The people who I have asked who likely would have encountered such as Chigurh don't see him as likely to grow in real life. Old criminal lawyers, forensic psychiatrists and priests would perhaps be the best ones to ask. Among that group, from my limited polling, no one has met Chigurh.

There are serial killers in real life who have killed more than Chigurh. But the nature of Chigurh is what makes him frightening. He is not grabbing prostitutes and skulking away, but can be (albeit uncontrollable) a weapon.

My hunch is the reason Chigurh seems impossible to me is that serial killer types (Bundy, Gacy, Lucas) are always so damaged otherwise, that it seems unlikely they would function at the level of a Chigurh, attacking a drug lord power structure and winning.

One theory that I like that makes Chigurh believable is that he is the invention of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Sheriff Bell creates Chigurh to sweep the trash out of his county:

Bell on the nature of Chigurh:

El Paso Sheriff: He's just a goddamn homicidal lunatic, Ed Tom.
Ed Tom Bell: I'm not sure he's a lunatic.
El Paso Sheriff: Yea well what would you call him?
Ed Tom Bell: Well, sometimes I think he's pretty much a ghost.

Free Will and Determinism

2008-08-09T18:21:00.009-05:00

I have been chewing on the idea of "free will" since I had a conversation with Mark Bennett last month. An abridged version of Mark's argument is presented in one of his blog postings: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2008/07/congratulations.html#comments

Mark raised the issue of Free Will and my initial response was to agree with him that there is none. Of course, as is my wont, pondering the question, I have waivered back and forth a dozen times. I can't decide if I have the power to decide if I have free will. Oh well.

I first resolved this issue in my mind in high school. I read Skinner's Walden Two and was persuaded that we become what we are because of heredity and environment.

I think I have been especially tolerant of other's foibles as a result of this view, but I am open to the possibility that I wanted to set the bar low for forgiveness for my own foibles. In this case, the philosophy would have followed the personal need, which of course would say less about the truth of the philosophy than the nature of the believer.

Other beliefs I have held, though at some times to me the pellucid truth at other times seem only a convenient justification for my shortcomings. I have often doubted the existence of hell, but was this because I could not face the prospects of finding myself there? I have long had socialistic tendencies, but has this arisen because of a suspicion that I have no knack for making money?

Anyway, determinism (at least by heredity and environment) has had its appeal for me. It helped me love people I was supposed to love although they were severely damaged human beings. It let me off the hook on my own damage.

My problem with determinism of the heredity and environment type is it appears to have lot in common with determinism of the Calvanistic, God has chosen us but not you people, type.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church endorses free will:

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."7

But the teaching of the Church seem to be more complex than this. As I recall my muddled reading of Augustine, he rejected free will. And I have previously written about Pascal's dispute with the Jesuits in which Pascal defends something very much like determinism.

Lord, why have you not blessed me with the environment and heredity to give me a better mind to figure this out? Or even prearranged environment and heredity would keep my friends who understand this better than I do alive and healthy and nearby, so they can explain it to me?

Mark Bennett says,

I’d like to congratulate the lawyers who prosecute, and the judges who sentence them, for the “choices” that they’ve made that put them at the top and my clients at the bottom. . . . and, for that matter, anyone else who is smugly self-righteous about his lot in life.

Generally, he views the determinists as tolerant and the free will crowd as intolerant. I'm not sure this is true. Even winning the argument that heredity and environment has put us where we are, what is to keep the winners in society from fighting to hold that position?

Wireless Brownsville

2008-07-15T22:00:00.007-05:00

St. Cloud, Florida has provided a free wireless network to anyone in the city limits. http://www.stcloud.org/documents/Cyber%20Spot/Cyber%20Spot%20FAQ_1.pdf

This is a 15 square mile grid and cost $3 million to set up. Brownsville is more than 80 square miles so, the project would not be as simple.

Many big cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia had similar wireless plans, but the projects have run into trouble when the service provider EarthLink reneged on the deal.

Some areas such as NYC have aimed more at providing wireless parks and public buildings.

I don't know whether any of this is feasible for Brownsville, but it would seem the potential would be great.

Providing greater access to computers would be nice also. What would it cost to give a laptop to every 6th grader? I recall Newt Gingrich had a similar plan, so this is not just my personal weirdness. (Though it may be a shared weirdness--sort of a Folie a Deux for politicos.)

I have heard about the $100 laptop plan for poor areas. We should qualify. Even without that computers have gotten less and less expensive. I am typing this on a $300 computer called ASUS eee. It is cheap because it dodges Microsoft by using the Linux operating system (which I prefer).

I think of the flowering that Brownsville kids had when JJ Guajardo and others decided to teach them chess. All of a sudden, Russell Elementary kids being raised without the benefits of Suburbans, summer camps and math clinics were on a level with the top students in the most expensive schools in the country.

Hillary for VP

2008-07-14T16:37:00.009-05:00

I was at my son's wedding reception in St. Louis this weekend when a rumor swept the hall that Hillary had been chosen as Vice President nominee by Obama. I think Randall (the one whose life, I argue, has not been a failure) got a call from his wife and started the rumor. I told several people myself. Later we all ran to the TV and the internet to confirm the story, but no one else seems to have heard of it.

Dr. K thought Obama would pick Caroline Kennedy or a Republican Chuck Hagel so he was surprised. I thought ultimately Obama would pick Hillary so I felt vindicated. But now it appears my gloating was premature. However, I still think she should be chosen.

I am not a big fan of Hillary's and did not vote for her in the primary, but I think she would be a good choice for several reasons. First, it would be the democratic thing to do. She did after all get the second most votes. The Constitution originally gave the Vice Presidency to the second place winner, regardless of party, so this is not exactly a new concept. Second, she appears to have a base of support different from Obama's. I don't know why this is, really, but if it is so, it would be ticket balancing. I assume Obama will carry New York without Hillary, but I do know my wife, mother and sister all supported Obama and they would be happier with her on the ticket. Third, my wife, sister and mother all supported Hillary and I don't want to have to hear about it if Obama picks someone else and loses.

In the primaries, just 1.3 million Texans voted Republican compared to almost 2.9 million who voted Democrat. The Nation magazine has an article this week that makes the argument that Texas could turn blue. The enthusiasm shown by Hillary supporters, especially on issues like health insurance and mortgage relief, at the county convention make me think a Texas upset might be possible.

Downtown Brownsville Without Cars

2008-07-06T10:10:00.007-05:00

As I drove down Elizabeth Street this morning, I passed a man, about my age, driving his motorized wheel chair in the other direction. He was holding a red and white umbrella to shelter him from a light rain.

Motorized wheelchairs are common in front of our house as well. I assume many originate from the high rise nursing home I see through the cane out my window behind the computer screen. Most are decorated with flags and bumper stickers.

Also, the HEB carts are common and I now from time to time add the adult tricycle to the mix. We have always had a lot of people walking in groups or alone. Cars seem to be increasingly rare as gas prices soar. I can still afford to drive, but I don't think most of my neighbors really can. Liability insurance costs have long since priced many Brownsville drivers out of the range of driving legally. Now $4.00 a gallon gas is finishing this group off as well. If it hits $6.00 by the end of the year as has been predicted I bet people start selling their cars.

Why not, City Fathers, just make this the way of life in downtown Brownsville. I propose taking a rectangle from Fronton to Tyler, East 14th to Palm and closing it to private automobiles and most trucks. If we are really bold, we can extend it to include UT Brownsville as well.

I suppose there would need to be a way for freight to be moved in and out so the merchants could get the ropa usada, Chinese knickknacks and sacks of pinto beans in and out, but we can still make the whole area safe for motorized wheelchairs, HEB carts, walkers and bicyclers. It works in other cities.

We would need some public transportation, of course. Buses or trams or a train or a horse or mule drawn carriage or gondolas, to get to the edge of the rectangle. Parking would need to be available somewhere outside the triangle.

Maybe certain merchants and craftsmen would get a boost. The complaint about shopping in downtown Brownsville is there is no place to park. Without cars, the streets that are too crowded for the cars would be abundantly adequate for the pedestrians and bicyclists.

Maybe it could be like a San Antonio Riverwalk, just not as stretched out. My favorite European city has always been Venice. I just now realize why: no cars.

Kennedy v. Louisiana: I Agree 2 -- More Thoughts

2008-07-02T07:41:00.009-05:00

Justice Alito argues in his dissent that there is not a national consensus to prohibit child rape that could be reflected in the "evolving standards of decency." He's probably right about that. As he notes, the language in the Coker decision thirty years ago prohibiting the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was broad enough to allow most state legislatures to assume that a murder was required for death. That was pretty well my assumption and I assumed the Texas legislature was doing its usual meaningless posturing when the death penalty was extended to the death penalty for child rapes.

I think judges are more reluctant than the communities "standards of decency" to impose the death penalty in rape. The confidence level that a crime has been committed in a murder tends to be higher in a murder than with a rape. With a murder there is usually a body and a murder weapon. It is of course possible to confuse a murder with an accident or a suicide and it is possible to get mixed up about who did it. With a rape, there are the issues of consent and even whether there has been a sexual act.

So if rape can be worse than murder (and it can) why not forge ahead and kill rapists? Well, its the Scottsboro Boys. It was 1931 and the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train was filled with young hoboes, white and black, male and female. There was an altercation that involved the white teenagers being tossed off the train. They complained to the stationmaster who wired ahead and a posse Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train. They unloaded all the blacks they can find, tied them up, threw them on a flatbed truck and hauled them to the jail in Scottsboro, Alabama.

They were brutalized legally and in the jail system. They were given the death penalty without lawyers. The racism was undisguised. The case became a international scandal and new law was made trying to find a way to keep Alabama from lynching the young men.

Most likely from the examining doctor's testimony a rape was never committed. The girls had been seized by the posse in Alabama and were under pressure to cooperate. The doctor found sperm, but it was not motile and too old to be from the train ride.

As I remember the history I read years ago, had it not been for the American Communist Party the teenagers would most certainly have been hanged. The NAACP was a afraid of the case because of the issue of rape. Other normally activist groups were similarly passive.

A black on white rape was easy to allege, hard to deny and could serve as a great tool to control an under-class. I think this is part of the reticence today to apply the death penalty to race cases.

However, I understand the reluctance of Mr. BB and others to rely on "evolving standards of decency." I have written before here about the risk that evolution can give a bigger or a smaller product at the end of the process. Little horses have evolved into big horses, but big armadillos have evolved into little armadillos. Our sense of dignity historically allowed genocide against different Indian peoples and could well evolve into mass murder and internment camps again.

The confidence placed in the written word is misplaced though. How much is the Article I, the Texas Bill of Rights honored? Was has become of being secure in a persons, etc? Where are those 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments when we need them?

Original intent is very logical, but are we willing to swallow the pill that comes with it. Our evolving sense of dignity has rejected both banishment and punishment by hard labor. Do we want these back?

The founders' sense of decency allowed slavery and prohibited women the vote. Are we ready to return to those wise days?

And as Mr. WC notes, homosexual acts could bring the death penalty. In fact one Joseph Ross was executed for "buggery" by the state of Pennsylvania in 1785. That's not all, though.

Blasphemy and idolatry were capital crimes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Adultery was capital in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York. Sodomy and bestiality were capital throughout the northern colonies, even for the animals involved.

Other capital crimes included robbery, burglary, arson, manslaughter, rape, highway robbery, maiming, burglary, arson, witchcraft, counterfeiting, squatting on Indian land, prison-breaking, piracy, perjury, embezzling tobacco, fraudulently delivering tobacco, forging inspectors' stamps for tobacco, smuggling tobacco, stealing hogs, receiving a stolen horse and concealing property to defraud creditors and burning timber intended for house frames.

There were special capital statutes applicable only to blacks. These included burning or destroying any grain, commodities, or manufactured goods, enticing other slaves to run away or "bruising" whites. Virginia feared attempts at poisoning and made it an offense for blacks to prepare or administer medicine.

I hope an execution for most of these offenses would offend the sense of decency for most of us. The colonial and state legislatures, though, gathered a majority to allow an execution for all of these laws.

Can't we acknowledge the sense of decency has and should change? Or should go round up a black pharmacist and kill him to avoid the threat of poisoning?

Kennedy v. Louisiana: I agree.

2008-06-28T18:37:00.005-05:00

Kennedy v. Louisiana. This is the case that told Louisiana they could not execute a man convicted of child rape. I have finally, and somewhat belatedly, waded through the 65 page decision and am no ready to toss my two cents on the scale. I would have voted with the majority and prohibited the execution, but I may have given my own concurring decision. Not that my opinion matters much, but since I get to give it for free, why not?

Let me first, though, describe my friend who while waiting for the bar results and impoverished, worked in a chicken factory in East Texas. I never saw the place, but she described it as thousands of chickens in all stages of hunger, drugging, narrow confinement and slaughter. It was twenty years later and she would not eat a chicken.

I will confess that I view every new Supreme Court decision through images of thirty plus years of watching the hunger, drugging, narrow confinement and slaughter of human beings. Not only do I lack the desire to eat them, I just don't see much point in their confinement and slaughter anymore.

So why not kill child rapists? I don't dispute the proposition that rape can be a more depraved crime than murder. Rape can destroy a life just as effectively as a bullet in the brain. Most of the sexual predators I have represented were childhood victims of rape. It is much like those horror movies in which, once bitten by the vampire, you become one.

Moreover, a lot of murders are not particularly depraved. Anecdotally, at least, they make the best trustees. The murderess who is chosen to be the nanny to the warden's children is part of prison lore. My dear old dad requested a parolee as a care-taker and, believing the lore, asked for a murderer. I ended up putting him in a nursing home instead, but the sentiment was there.

A lot of crimes are more depraved than murder. Bhopal for instance. AT&T in Chile. IBM in Nazi Germany. Asbestos companies. The Pinto gas tank. The War in Iraq.

So, for me, the proportionality argument does fall flat. But I have other and I think better arguments why the decision was correct. More later.

Lynchings, Poverty and Executions

2008-06-26T21:00:00.007-05:00

I'm only recently back from my annual pilgrimage to Gerry Spence's Thunderhead Ranch near Dubois, Wyoming. Sara and I went for the capital punishment seminar. Sara is returning as an intern for the Trial Lawyer College this summer.

I have attended since 2001. The top defenders in death penalty cases come from around the country to work on their cases.

A week of death is not exactly a cheery prospect, but the weather is cool, the surroundings are peaceful. Because there is no internet or cell phone access, we have an enforced isolation that allows reflection.

This is a very unselfish group of lawyers. Lawyers in other fields often hide their secrets of success. Professional jealousy and the competition for clients may result in protecting what little is known to make sure some other lawyer doesn't get the case. Capital punishment defense lawyers do not do this. No one ever knows if the next case is the one that will result in the type of melancholy that ends a career.

So skills and ideas are shared freely, making it an easy field to enter. And of course poverty and crime are a growth industry.

One interesting discussion is the relationship between slavery and the death penalty. States with a legacy of slavery are far more likely to have the death penalty. To the extent the lynchings were used to enforce slavery and then Jim Crow laws, those areas continue with the death penalty. A map provided to me by my scholarly friend, Phillip Cowen, darkens the counties that had lynchings; Phillip argues there is a correlation between the lynchings in past and legal executions today. Cameron County is of the darkest color.

Why would either be necessary? I think they are rational. If you want to terrorize an underclass to keep them from challenging people in power, lynchings and legal executions are a tool in the arsenal. Because Cameron County has an extreme divide between rich and poor, we would expect many death sentences. And we get them.

Tricycling Brownsville

2008-06-05T17:48:00.004-05:00

So Jeff now daily rides his bicycle to the federal courthouse and parks under the awning while he presides for the Brownsville division over the defense of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. Anyway, with the usual dollop of mimetic desire, I too wanted to ride a bicycle to the courthouse.

Kathy, though, insisted that I could not walk without falling so the risk of a bicycle was too great for the meager amount of life insurance I had purchased. Because I suspected I was unable to qualify for more life insurance, we compromised on the adult tricycle. As it happens, Jeff had purchased the tricycle for his suegro who it seems is even more feeble than I am and he had only been able to ride it once.

Kathy and I headed for the island in Sara's truck, fighting all the way. My daughters thought it was fine if I rode a tricycle, but only if I wore a disguise, so no one would recognize me as their father--Groucho nose, glasses and mustache.

On the way back, somewhere along the way, the flag, you know, orange on a tall fiberglass pole, blew away.

Back on the ground in Brownsville, I raised the seat and tightened things up. Kathy insisted I ride around in the parking lot behind the house some before I ventured out. I also dug up an old bicycle cable with a lock on in that belongs to some long since stolen bicycle. I did fine in the parking lot so I ventured out into the larger world, humming the tune from Indiana Jones.

The first problem is car driving in downtown Brownsville is a blood sport and there are extra points for bicyclists. There was no way I could go on the busy streets. The next problem is that tricycles are wider than bicycles and it takes some calculation to make sure I didn't get stuck on a curb.

I soon discovered 8th Street, low traffic and a nice parking area halfway between the state and federal courthouses: a light pole perfect for locking up an adult tricycle. There wasn't a lot of other traffic.

This particular adult tricycle has a basket of a perfect size for my old beat-up leather briefcase.

However, there is the problem of sunburning the top of my bald pate. My usual straw fedora won't stay on with the blazing speed of an adult tricycle. I dug a gimme cap out of the closet that says "Relax" on the front and it seems to work.

The neighborhood kids are also out on their bikes and when I drive by they come out and join me for a couple of blocks. A half a dozen kids on bikes, one pulling another in a sort of bike trailer filled with yet another kid, cruising the wrong way down 8th street. It may appear to be an odd gathering, but outside of inmates, it has become the larger part of my contact with the world.

Jeff tells me this is a good green thing to do, but then he is much more hopeful about life. I just keep thinking how much money I could save if I could raise enough money to be able to afford to sell the car.

Pascal's First Three Provincial Letters

2008-06-04T21:09:00.009-05:00

"Go West Young Man," is the phrase Horace Greeley famously stole from another editorial. "Read Pascal, Old Man" is what my kid suggests. So I have been trying.

I dutifully hopped on the adult tricycle loaned to me by Jeff (the retired syphilis hunter) and peddled over to the Brownsville Public Library. There, the only Pascal available was volume 30 out of the Great Books publication. So I check it out and I also picked up both volumes of the Syntopicon for browsing.

For the last several days, I have been reading The Provincial Letters. It seemed reasonable to start at the beginning of the book, because I don't know enough about the writings to skip to the good parts. Also, the last third is filled with science and math and equations that I will probably never be able to read. Unfortunately several days of reading and re-reading has taken me only through the first three letters.

Austin sneers at the reading of interpretations, histories, biographies, etc. from the classic writers, but with hard guys, I tend to read around them a while before I can get up the courage to actually read the book. Sometimes I only read around them and never get to the book.

In the case of Pascal, except for the two page "Biographical Note" at the beginning of the Volume 30, I haven't read anything. Usually, trying to get ready to read something this intimidating, I would first read a biography of Pascal, then I would read a history of 17th Century France, then I would read a history of mathematicians and then I would pick up a "the Best of" type of collection that has summaries and explanations surrounding snippets of original work. The down side to this approach is that I may never actually read anything by the author I am reading about so I don't get a chance to see if I agree with any of the critiques. For instance, I once read a good biography of James Joyce. I still have both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake knocking around in the house, unread.

For what very little it may be worth, this is what I have gleaned from the first three Provincial Letters: Pascal was attracted to a form of French Catholicism called Jansenism. A theologian for the Jansenists named M. Arnauld was "brought before the Sorbonne" which seems to mean was tried in a court that decided correct theology. The Sorbonne must have been large because 71 doctors tried to defend him and "on the other side" eighty secular doctors and some forty mendicant friars condemned him.

Pascal came to the rescue with these Provincial letters. The orthodox view was promoted by the Jesuits and this was that every person had "sufficient grace" given to him by God to obey the divine commandments. The Jansenists said, maybe so, every person has sufficient grace, but not every person was given by God the "efficacious grace," so they couldn't actually obey the divine commandments by putting this sufficient grace into action.

The Jesuits accused the Jansenists of believing like Protestants and in particular, Calvinists, that God had given this efficacious grace only to a chosen few. Then there were fence straddlers who agreed with the Jansenists, but wanted to stay on the right side of the argument politically who said, "Sufficient grace is given to all, but not every one has the type of grace that will suffice."

Pascal notes that the choices given are being censured as a Jansenist, being a heretic or being a blockhead and offending against reason.

Pascal has one of his characters argue that silence is the safest position. If you cannot remain silent, the next safest position is being a blockhead.

I'm sure there is a moral to this story, a punch-line to this joke, a crisis to be weathered, a lesson to be learned. If I get to the end and figure it out, I'll let you know.

Doocing

2008-05-31T18:58:00.008-05:00

People seem to be willing to post almost anything on the internet, about themselves, about their friends, about their enemies, about their employers. I have been amazed. I don't know how to get on facebook, but I have seen it when the kids do and have been surprised at what all the youngsters will brag about--sexual escapades, employment hi-jinks, drug use.

I don't doubt these things have been topics among friends and acquaintances into pre-history, but now they are permanent and available to all. In junior high school, we would quake because what we did was on our "permanent record." Now it really is. And if it seems cute enough at age 16, like a little tattoo of a pussy cat, say, at age 40 and beyond it becomes grotesque. Now that aging tattoo is stretched across continents and hardened into scarred pieces of old flesh. It is like having that old shoplifting mug shot etched on your sagging jowls.

I suppose we may finally learn some tolerance with everyone's past being dragged around like a dead prehensile tail, but it is not (to my eyes) a pretty sight.

This is all new to me and requires teaching some new tricks to an old dog. For a long time I resisted putting a "." in the middle of a sentence. I've given up, of course, on that now. I still don't know what various signals mean or how to use them. LOL :-) :-( :-o, etc. But I do now know "blog" is short for "web log" and I know the meaning of "doocing."

"Doocing" is:

dooced adjective /dust/ having lost your job because of something you have put in an Internet weblog

dooce verb [T] (usually passive) /dus/
doocing noun [U/C] /dus/

The word came from a blog by Heather B. Armstrong, still in existence, dooce.com

Ms. Armstrong coined the term by misspelling the word "doood," a term that must mean something to someone, but not me. She was working as a blog designer, wrote about her employer and got fired. She seems to have taken her fame on to bigger and better things based on the references to book signing parties on her blog, but her ultimate advice is as follows:

“I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for

this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace.

My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the

internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING

ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.”

Since Armstrong, there have been many notorious cases of people being dooced. Ellen Simonetti was fired from Delta airlines for some hardly racy photographs of herself in an flight attendant uniform in an airplane. Mark Jen was fired from Google for posting comparative pay benefits between Google and Microsoft. Jessica Cutler was a staff assistant from an Ohio Senator who was posting anonymously, but was outed and then fired after she described her ventures into prostitution to augment her meager staff pay.

At this stage there is very little protection for employees of private employers who are not careful and offend their bosses. The larger issues of defamation and disclosure of trade secrets are also being tested by the law. I am interested in the legal developments related to blogging and plan to do a few posts along these lines.

Pigsmeat Spence and the return of Food Riots

2008-05-25T10:02:00.005-05:00

Do you ever wake up in the morning thinking of Pigsmeat Spence. Yes, this happened to me again this morning, so I thought it must be time to unburden myself.

Pigsmeat was about five feet tall. He was born in 1750 and died in 1814. He was one of nineteen children and spent a lot of time in jail. He once got in a fight with a political opponent and was beat up with a quarterstaff. (This is the English hardwood fighting stick Little John used in the Robin Hood story.) He married, but his wife, preacher and publisher all died before Pigsmeat reached the age of 45, so he lived the last part of his life alone. He was usually penniless. He made some money teaching and selling tracts about politics and coining money. He had a son who helped him some in his businesses and married a young pretty servant girl as his second wife, but she deserted him.

I have a warm spot for Pigsmeat: he could see the problems, but couldn't really figure out a good way to fix them, so he came up with a series of plans that confused his followers. He was responding to the enclosures that were forcing people off the land and causing starvation. He was thought to favor the nationalization of land, but he didn't trust the government believing the rich would use political power to take advantage of such a system. He also advocated land owned by parishes for the benefit of people in the parish. Critics complain his various plans were inconsistent and half-baked. I see him, then, as a searcher after truth who says what he believes and then when he figures out it won't work says something else.

Pigsmeat's real name was Thomas. He got the apodo of Pigsmeat after his publication, "Pig's Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude." Numismatists still value the tokens he minted to celebrate his magazine.

He took the name in response to an Edmund Burke quotation in response to the French Revolution, "Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude."

The aristocracy was afraid the French and their revolutionary ideas were on the way. Pigsmeat was especially peaved that the a local Duke hoarded the bounty of the land when people were hungry. He says this:

What must I say to the French if they come? If they jeeringly ask me what I am fighting for? Must I tell them, "for my country"? My dear country in which I dare not pluck a nut? Would they not laugh at me? If the French came I would throw down my musket, saying: "Let such as the Duke of Portland, who claims the country, fight for it."

No wonder he kept getting in trouble.

Now why has Pigsmeat been bubbling up in my dreams? The food riots, probably. Pigsmeat Spence was formed by food riots. His favorite preacher, addressed them in sermons. (Where are these kinds of preachers now that we need them?)

Food riots in Malhalla, Egypt. Food riots in Haiti where there has been a sharp increase in the sale of "dirt cookies," (cookies of mud with salt and shortening). Also in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Maurtania, Senegal and Bangladesh. Three billion people survive on less than $2 per day. In 2007 the price of grain rose by 42 percent and dairy products by 80 percent. In the last twelve months alone what prices have increased by 130 percent, and rice by 74 percent.

In the United States food inflation is the highest in decades. An unprecedented 28 million Americans are expected to receive food stamps to survive this year.

Today's Washington Post in an article by Colum Lynch says, "The United Nations is already struggling to avert a famine in Somalia and is feeding more than 2.7 million. 'What is of major concern is the thought that the entire emergency food system may not be able to cope,' according to an internal U.N. paper."

More on Success--Chesterton

2008-05-24T06:40:00.004-05:00

In earlier discussion of whether my friends and I are failures, I missed our strongest defender-- G.K. Chesterton. Under the title is an essay that I could never succeed in surpassing on the subject. But I will make some comments on his comments just so I can be close enough to be warmed by the embers of his wordsmithing.

"To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide."

This is not what is normally meant we worry about success or failure: "You are a success at having spent far more money than you have earned." "You are a success at not paying bills on time and incurring late fees."

For years I have restricted my New Years' resolutions to a plan to eat a little more, gain some more weight and get less exercise. These are resolutions I can keep.

Chesterton uncovers the real aim when we talk about success: success in obtaining money or worldly position. He then exposes the self-help books that pretend to teach success. There are only two ways to success at any decent occupation, say, bricklaying or writing books: "One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation. If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so."

Accepting this and doubting that at this stage that I can get any impressive measure at obtaining money or worldly position, I have decided to merely pretend I have done so. Please spread the word that wrote the great American Epic poem and then moved on to invent the perpetual motion machine. For these I won back to back Nobel prizes in literature and science. My Olympic Gold medal was only in curling, but it shows I am well rounded.

Chesterton then looks at the surest way to riches: There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only "instinct" I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as "the sin of avarice."

My Dear Old Dad used to say, "Behind every great fortune is a great crime." I'm not sure he thought this was a bad idea: he would have enjoyed both the fortune and the crime. However, the game was to look at the great fortune and find the crime that preceded it: smuggling, war-profiteering, consumer fraud, monopoly, theft, murder.

Why shouldn't we view someone who hoards too much wealth the same way as we view someone who drinks too much whiskey or shoots too much heroin? In all these cases, the harm both to the addict and society is great-- I would suggest greater in the case of the rich man. After all Jesus never warned against alcohol or drugs.

But Jesus must have meant something when he said,...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24

Chesterton makes the point about lust: Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride?

TB and MRSA and Ronald Reagan

2008-05-23T20:46:00.008-05:00

I will always think of Ronald Reagan as the president who brought back tuberculosis. I think of all the evil he did, corruption at home and abroad, his legacy should most appropriately linked to inflicting disease on America.

I thought I had remembered Reagan cutting of the tuberculosis funds in the eighties, but I could find so little reference to this political crime, I began to doubt my memory. Ironically, when you run a search of "Ronald Reagan and tuberculosis" you mainly get an outbreak among the sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan in 2006.

My memory in this case was correct. These are from a publication of the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2004 (click the title):

Unlike the outbreaks of “emerging” diseases like Ebola, Hanta Virus or AIDS, when New York City faced an epidemic of resurgent tuberculosis in 1990-91 the famous disease detectives of the CDC faced the challenge, not of identifying a new pathogen, but of developing policies to correct a breakdown in institutional disease control that had been more than a decade in the making. The few remaining tuberculosis specialists in the United States had warned for years that a TB resurgence was likely due to the dismantling of the city’s public health surveillance and treatment programs since the 1960s. One of those critics was Dr. Lee Reichman, Executive Director of the National Tuberculosis Center in Newark, N.J., who in 1992 described the upsurge in TB cases as “horrendous” to a New York Times reporter, remarking that, “This was a 100% preventable and curable disease.”

And,

The rightwing political climate had generated an atmosphere of retrenchment in the public health community. Every year from 1981-87 the Reagan Administration called for repeal of the federal tuberculosis program (Ryan 1992). Ironically, in 1986, the year when New York City’s TB case rates suddenly rose by 20% over the previous year, the federal-supported TB surveillance program for drug resistance was discontinued (Berkelman 1994).

Of course, in the early eighties, tuberculosis was not much of a problem, but Reagan guaranteed it would become one. I first started seeing tuberculosis during about the same time in Brownsville in the jail when the jailers were getting sick and calling about workers' compensation claims. Of course, we could then still blame the problem on sick people coming across from Mexico. Not anymore.

Now we are hearing about MRSA or the antibiotic resistant strains of staph. These have been around for a while. I had a case involving an infection in a local hospital about 15 years ago. My client had gone into the hospital for a knee replacement. The radiologist had burned him and then the burn was infected with an drug resistant staph infection.

The expert witnesses gave information about the disease, but the facts that struck me were the origin of the disease and why it sticks around. As I recall from the expert testimony, MRSA arose in Detroit among drug users who were passing needles around and treating themselves with antibiotics, but not allowing a long enough course of treatment to cure the disease. Soon, though, it was in hospitals all over the country. The problem is that modern hospitals don't have windows that will open. The bug is killed with fresh air and sunlight.

Now, the bug sits in wait in almost every hospital, jail, military base and school. About a third of us would show positive for some staph infection if we all got our noses swabbed. Many people don't get sick, but some are more susceptible than others. Especially those with open wounds or compromised immune systems.

What does this have to do with government? First, this is not even a disease that requires reporting to the CDC, so we don't know how many have it or how many have died. However, it is generally believed as infectious diseases go, to be the biggest killer in the country. Second, it is a disease perpetuated by a large poor, sick, incarcerated population.

Twenty eight years of Reaganism has taken a toll. I hope it ends this year.

Brownsville: Land of the Free

2008-05-23T06:40:00.007-05:00

United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of hard-core pornography, it may be indefinable, but "I know it when I see it." That is roughly my view of defining freedom.

In general, if a large man with a pistol or an automatic rifle is nearby telling you what to do, this indicates a loss of freedom. If someone with a weapon insists that you take off your shoes or belt or throw away your toothpaste or takes away your telephone, this indicates a loss of freedom. Freedom is hard to find crossing a border, going through Sarita, Texas, getting on a plane, going into a courthouse or driving around near the border.

If someone with a gun asks to search your trunk or open your bags or look through your papers, this is a loss of freedom.

If someone with a gun expects to get an answer when your are asked why you went into Mexico, or asks for your ID or a birth certificate, or sends you through a metal detector or won't let you carry a pen-knife, this is a loss of freedom.

There is a certain indignity in much of this. As long as I am healthy and don't have holes in my socks, it is not much to me, but watching airport security search my old mother when she was in a wheel chair, seemed beyond the pale. Watching older jurors struggling to take off their shoes and put them back on to get into the courthouse was painful. After all, they were ordered to be there by the court and probably didn't want to be there.

Maybe when the Bill of Rights are observed, this is a good American definition of freedom. That poor battered document cannot be taken at face value, though. The exceptions are bigger than the rules.

Remember the hubbub among minor politicians when Kris Kristofferson wrote, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose?" And he was talking about romance and Bobby McGee.

I don't know if it is just my mood in the last few days, or I am changing my mind about the world, but increasingly I am less concerned about societal freedom than those things that make me feel freer.

There is not much I can do about going to the courthouse, but I fly and cross the border less and less as time goes on. And this makes me feel freer. I am freer in my house and on foot than I am out driving around. "Did I remember the seat belt? Do I have my insurance card with me. Is my inspection sticker current?" I am freer in Brownsville than Harlingen or Denton, Texas. There are fewer cameras to report whether I paid a toll or had a full stop. Also, there is a more tolerant attitude for minor foibles among the police, judges and prosecutors than in other places I have lived.

This was part of the reason I moved to Brownsville in 1980 in the first place. I had lived in McAllen when I was in grade school and had fond recollections of the Valley. I was representing the Moonies, that is the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity throughout Texas and Oklahoma after the Regional Commander of the Moonies had been beaten by the Chief of Police of Aubrey, Texas and been charged with an assault on a police officer. The young man had been selling flowers door to door, and had offended the sensibilities of that mean, inbred little town, Aubrey, Texas.

Anyway, as part of the work I was hired to do after defending the Regional Commander, I started suing cities across Texas and Oklahoma to challenge the constitutionality of their ordinances aimed at keeping out the Moonies. Mostly, I was met with hostility by the City Attorneys, a group who are notoriously ignorant of the United States Constitution.

Then I received a letter from Brownsville that made me love the place.

Brownsville was an exception. Instead of the usual nasty response, I received a nice letter from Shel Weisfeld who was then serving as a contract assistant city attorney. Shel in his letter apologized for the City having inadvertently and improperly restricted the free exercise of religion. He saved the City a lawsuit.

A few months later I came to Brownsville to see what sort town this must be. And I began looking for a place to live.

Austin's interpretation of "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death."

2008-05-20T22:06:00.001-05:00

Mr. Dupin observes: Perhaps its the translation,but I find it difficult to take any real meaning from XVIII other than what seems apparent on its face: "That Men Are Not to Judge Of Our Happiness Till After Death" because Fortune plays a role.

This is my reading as well. An aside, Uncle Toby: The translation I read is by Donald M. Frame. It is a 20th Century Translation first published in 1957. Mr. Dupin uses Charles Cotton's translation from the late 17th Century. John Florio's translation from the early 17th Century is the one to which I linked yesterday's post. Both Cotton's and Florio's translations are pleasing to the ear. Frame's is easier for me to understand.

Austin, though, tells me I am missing the whole point of the essay. He gives three clues to support his argument: 1. When referring to the Latin, pre-Christian writers, "fortune" is not capitalized, but when referring to the present day, "Fortune" is capitalized. 2. When reaching his conclusion, he notes, "God has willed it as he pleased...." 3. Montaigne notes three (not two or four) execrable and infamous persons whose deaths were ordered and "in every sense composed to perfection." 4. The "by his fall" language echoes the descent into hell of Jesus and other Christian references.

Austin says, we may dismiss one or two of these clues, but at three,we have to pay attention because Montaigne fills his essays with hints of his true intentions. And however much he may love the classics, Montaigne is still very much the Christian.

This, then, is the the argument Austin gives from the hints: "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death" is a rejection of the pagan virtues and an embrace of salvation through Christ. Upon death, the "power and fame" to which we aspire by a career is surpassed by something more grand and glorious than we have desired or hoped.

The pagans before Jesus recognized that "however fortune (small 'f') may smile on them, men cannot be called happy until they have been seen to spend the last day of their lives. The pre-Christian standard is the "state" of the person. If a king is captured and ends up a carpenter or clerk to Rome, his station in life has changed and he cannot be happy.

Today (Montaigne's time) we have Jesus and the present time is indicated when saying, "For it seems that, as storms and tempests are provoked to humble the pride and loftiness of our buildings," so are there "spirits up above" who are envious of grandeurs here below and will wreak havoc on human things and trample all that speaks of human eminence and laugh them all to scorn.

It further seems (again in Montaigne's Christian present tense) that "Fortune (big 'f') sometimes lies in wait precisely for the last day of our life, to show her power to overturn in a moment what she has built up over many years...."

The three execrable and infamous persons are meant to remind us of Jesus and the two thieves on the cross. And the holy trinity. Who but Jesus had a death that was "ordered and in every circumstance composed to perfection?"

By embracing Christian Grace and rejecting the ambitions and designs of man, we can gain a gallant and fortunate death. Through Christ, we may arrive where we "aspired to without going there, more grandly and gloriously" than we had desired or hoped. By our fall we may go beyond the power and the fame to which we had aspired in by our careers.

According to Austin, in this essay, Montaigne answers the question, "Does it matter, this success or failure in life?" with, "No. Success and failure are replaced by something more grand and glorious--the Peace of Christ. This is what allows us when we die to "go well, that is to say quietly and insensibly."

Mr. Dupin also notes that as with the Bible, "improper translation and interpretation can lead to unintended results." This has long concerned me. If Jesus spoke Aramaic, and then His words were written down in Greek and much later translated to English, how am I to rely on what Jesus supposedly said, not speaking or reading Aramaic or Greek?

Neither do I read French. Oh, to be an exegete.

Interpreting Montaigne: Ed's superficial reading of the Essay of judging happiness only after death

2008-05-19T23:44:00.007-05:00

I was pleased with the comments yesterday's blog elicited. As Mr. Dupin observed, Montaigne (the granddaddy of all bloggers, GOAB) does say it best, in his essay, (aptly named for our subject) "That our happiness must not be judged until after our death." He begins by quoting Ovid:

No man should be called happy till his death;

Always we must await his final day

Reserving judgment till he's laid away.

Here I have the aid of my son, Austin, back from his studies for a few days, in interpreting: Ovid's stories involve metamorphosis. The man with the grief in his old age was Cadmus. "Actaeon, one of your grandsons, was your first reason for grief, in all your happiness, Cadmus." The grandson grew horns on his forehead and his hunting dogs ate him. As long and happy as Cadmus' life had been when his grandchildren began to suffer, his joy ended.

Mr. Hugo 2006 adds the alliterative "lawyers' lament" verdict to the concerns about success and failure. But we lawyers cannot take comfort from the fact we are largely too selfish to find ourselves working in a hospice; we very well may end up the recipient of the care.

Montaigne makes the point, "God has willed it as he pleased; but in my time three of the most execrable and most infamous persons I have known in very abomination of life have had deaths that were ordered and in every circumstance composed to perfection."

And it feels like to me, good people often have nasty, ugly deaths. When the wrong organs begin to fail before the rest of the body, long periods a pain result.

Montaigne also tells us, "In judging the life of another, I always observe how it ended; and one of my principal concerns about my own end is that it shall go well, that is to say quietly and insensibly."

Montaigne is concerned that we may live just a day too long. He quotes someone named Laberius: "Truly this day I have lived one day longer than I should have." When I first read that I tried to figure out who Laberius was and why he thought he should have avoided a certain day.

One guy named Laberius was ridiculed by Julius Caesar but he won the day by being quicker witted. This is all I can find out about him, but it doesn't seem like his last day disgraced his historical legacy, in any case.

Another guy name Laberius died in Britain with a spear through his lung.

Lingering on seems to give the chance to repair a reputation. It is rather like refusing to pass the examination of a harmful witness until something good comes of the testimony. A line in Chinatown made this point: "Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

Presidents are said to worry about what history will say. And I have friends who worry about a legacy. "Will I be known as a greater lawyer than Clarence Darrow?" That sort of thing.

Now my task is to decide whether or not it matters.

That all having been said, Austin tells me I have missed the whole point of the essay. On the next post, I'll describe what he says it really means.

If At First You Don't Succeed, Failure May Be Your Style. Quentin Crisp

2008-05-18T21:44:00.006-05:00

My friend Randall (who hereinafter will be referred to as R. to protect his anonymity) called with a topic. When are we failures in life? His wife tells him he is a failure and he is past 60 with the kid grown and gone, so there is not much time to turn things around at this point.

R. disputes her conclusion. He sees his life as largely a success and his wife sees it as largely (or completely and totally) a failure. A loss. Not really worth having been lived.

I for one would be willing to declare R. a success on the basis of being a successful father alone. This was Jackie O's definition and she was rich and famous. So R. can accept this definition if he wants. His wife won't, but I'll give it to him. For that matter, it would be easy to make an argument for R. He was elected a member of his city counsel and had many successful law suits that mattered at least to his clients. Somehow, though, I don't think these would weigh much in the wifely judgment day.

I have further assured R. that in my experience, all husbands are sooner or later failures, completely and utterly. I further assured him that Kathy is always asking me, "If you're so smart, why aren't we rich." She throws out the decade that has passed without a vacation. She notes my car always looks like a wreck. My clothes are terrible. My dog is fat and has gas. She grumbles about the 32 inch waist I had when we were married that keeps swinging between 40 and 50 inches. Despite my soaring success in life (as I see it), she is sure I have failed and failed her as well. "I'm worried about my future," she cries.

And it is the same with all of our friends. I mentioned our mutual friends, all of whom are now about sixty and failures in the eyes of their wives. Some have actually saved money, have a nice house, annuities and 401 K plans, but their wives are still wrecks about the declining income and the likelihood of destitution. None of this seemed to comfort R.

Anyway, it is now incumbent upon me to redefine success and failure in such a way that R. and I and all of our friends (who have lived so long and have so little to show for it) are not failures.

Oddly, I don't remember much comment about the subject of failure from philosophers or novelists or poets in my decades of aimless and unproductive reading.

However, I do think when we read a translation of Aristotle and his definition of "happiness," this is something we would now call "success." My hope is that Aristotle can bail out R. and me and all others similarly situated. If we can claim to be a success by Aristotelian standards, this would largely negate being a failure when we are weighed in the wifely balance.

The word we translate as happiness is eudaimonia which breaks down, eu, "good" and daimonia, "spirit." By extension, it refers to good fortune or what we might usually call "success."

Happiness for moderns is subjective. You can take a pill or have whiskey and become happy. For Aristotle, a child could never be happy, because not enough life had been lived. Aristotle grappled with the concept of not calling anyone happy until his death and believed that the life of happiness could be negated even after death. If someone based his life on a project that was merely and illusion and false, this may not be learned until later. The happy life would be erased retroactively even if the dead was oblivious to the failure. If the dead man's son turns out to be a murderer, he will not have been happy.

Even for moderns, these things could be said about success. The apparently successful man might be safely in the grave when his children or his life's work goes on to prove he was a terrible failure.

First what I "remember" Aristotle said, but cannot find. Happiness (hereinafter called success) is achieved with good birth, good health, good land, good children and some other things like good horses.

These things are achieved by practicing the virtues. Political virtue is highly ranked. R. served as a counsel member for the poor area of town and worked to help them get the city services of the richer parts of town. Aristotle would give him high marks for this. I'd say a B or maybe an A-.

Aristotle would also judge success on how money is handled. He ranked liberality and magnificence high. Magnificence is something like giving a park to the city. I doubt R. was able to do much of this, but he always ranked high in liberality. He gave political contributions and attended the arts and bought lunches. Aristotle would probably at least give him a C+. Now this is the sticking point and where his wife probably fails him. In fact, a failure here for most wives seems to outweigh all the other grades. It is heavily weighted in the wifely report card.

Aristotle put a lot of stock in honor as well. I think he was talking about war or other sacrifice. R. probably wouldn't get much there.

Aristotle wanted a balance between ambitions and lack of ambition. R. may have fallen a little heavy in the lack of ambition category. OK, only a D, but it isn't failure.

On the anger/good temper grade, after overcoming a childhood inability to lose at ping pong, he would score very high on the good temper grade. Pushing an A, I would say.

Aristotle also graded success on friendliness, truthfulness and good-wit. R. really should get better than average on all of these. Especially on friendliness and good-wit. I don't know if Aristotle graded on a curve or not, but surely R. should get B's or better.

So, on Aristotle's success report card, I think R. would probably be a success.

How then, should he (and I and all others similarly situated) comfort ourselves on having failed on the wife report card? I say we look to true successes in life like Socrates, Tolstoy, Gandhi. If the biographers are correct, their wives would have given them failing grades as well.

On Clichés

2008-05-18T06:22:00.005-05:00

It has been a while since I've posted. No one has complained or apparently even noticed, but I am feeling disoriented by the lack of structure in my life. The ritual of nightly (or in the wee hours of the morning) pounding out what is on my mind has been interrupted by the whip of economic necessity and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Differently put, I have been working and it has kept me from my play.

Now for the correction (or the swinging back of the pendulum), I love a cliché.

The wee hours of the morning. I never recall having used the word "wee" in any other context. "The small hours of the morning" says the same thing. About thirty years ago I heard a jury argument in which the lawyer (one Warren Burnett of Odessa, Texas, now forgotten, but lionized by the young lawyers in those days) told the jurors to make a decision that they would not wake up and worry about in the wee hours of the morning. I have now repeated it in jury argument dozens of times.

I associate the phrase in my mind with another phrase, "the drinker's hour." I have understood there is an hour about three in the morning when the alcohol wakes you up again after passing out earlier in the evening. Is this in Malcom Lowry's Under the Volcano? It turns out a musical band of a genre foreign to me (post-grunge?) called a song "the drinker's hour." The Von Ra drinker's hour is 2:35 a.m. Whether we wake up from alcohol or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the wee hours of the morning, it is always something uncomfortable, that a juror does not want to have to do for making a bad decision in deliberation.

We sometimes teach the use of clichés in trial advocacy courses, though no one says it quite like that. The idea is to find a theme the jury will recognize for the trial. Something comfortable and settling like, "A leopard doesn't change its spots" or "If you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas" or "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive" or "Don't rush to judgment." Cliché's all, but innovation is not what the law is supposed to do. New law takes a few centuries getting used to.

Journalists and comedians seem to get excited about stealing other people's work, but lawyers do not. It is perfectly OK to get a copy of someone else's final argument and memorize it word for word and then deliver it to the next jury. Pleadings and briefs are often cut and paste (now in the word-processor sense, before, literally). Lawyers don't call it "plagiarism," (unless a client pays to call it plagiarism), we call it "precedent."

Whip of economic necessity. This is a cliché, but it seems in narrow circles. Back when Texas still required insurance companies to actually pay a little bit to workers injured on the job, there was case law that explained someone might have to keep working even after suffering total incapacity because of the whip of economic necessity. If the kids are hungry and you are losing your house, you keep working even if you are hurt. To me, it sounds like a cliché, but an internet search doesn't even produce the phrase.

Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Most everything Shakespeare said first is now a cliché. Hamlet used this phrase when deciding whether to commit suicide. Talking about worries, I like "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" also.

In a final argument I gave in an asbestos case many years ago, I cribbed most of the language from Shylock's speech: "We are people too. Don't we have hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Aren't we fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer ? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?" Something along that line. I didn't give credit, foolishly believing it would be obvious. Later the court reporter told me that the asbestos company's defense lawyers and later a national network of asbestos defense lawyers had been ordering the transcript from all around the country to decide how to answer it. For a while it was entertaining watching the asbestos defense bar, always stump ignorant, trying to debate Shylock. (Ultimately, through the clever misuse of bankruptcy laws the answer was much like that in the play: "We have the political power, so you little people sooner or later lose, no matter how clever you think you are.")

Stump ignorant. Because I have not yet been called out on it, I don't yet consider this a cliché, but merely a very clever thing I say. Now for the confession: I think I read that phrase in a Thornton Wilder novel--The Eighth Day, maybe. "Why would you do that," he asked. "Well, because I don't want to live and die stump ignorant," he answered sagely.

Cameron County Can't Afford Death Penalty Prosecutions

2008-05-10T22:39:00.005-05:00

How much does it cost to kill a man? How much should it cost?

North Carolina estimated that that an execution costs $2.6 million more than a non-death murder case. Florida says $3.2 million per prosecution, but the average cost of those executed has averaged out at $24 million. Californians have paid more than a quarter of a billion for each of the state's eleven executions.

The Dallas Morning News estimates that each Texas death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million.

The trial alone involves a hefty increased fee. The State of Kansas estimated $508,000 per capital case more than plain vanilla murder. The State of Washington said it was $470,000 on top of the costs for another type of murder. Washington also estimated as much as an additional $70,000 for court personnel and $100,000 for appeal.

In a February 4, 2008 article in the New Yorker Magazine called Death In Georgia: The high price of trying to save an infamous killer’s life by Jeffrey Toobin, the author describes a trial in which the entire indigent defense budget of the county of $1.2 million was exhausted before the first juror was picked. The case had to be put on hold until more money could be found.

Cameron County has charged about 100 people with capital murder according to an i-docket count. These cases appear to go back about ten years.

I recently requested a count of the number of pending capital prosecutions in Cameron County. The number is an extraordinary 18 cases with two on death row.

With even a conservative price of, say, $2 million per execution and Cameron County proposes to execute all twenty of these people, the price will be about $40 million. I am not accountant, but this looks to me like it is impossible with Cameron County's budget.

Nor am I very good at reading budgets, but it appears that the Cameron County's 2008 is $111 million. The indigent defense budget is located in two places. One is for personnel in the amount of $199,000, down from $223,000 in 2007 and the other from a General Fund in the amount of less than $900,000. My guess is the second number represents the approximately $6,000 per month per court for contract attorneys and appointments and the first number is court personnel who run the system, but I welcome correction and explanation from the numbers crunchers among you, Readers True.

Assume that no new capital indictments are issued and the costs of the 20 now targeted for death is spread out over five years, that is still $8 million per year. The entire cost of the jail for 2008 is only about $4 million. The district courts are $2.4 million a year. The County Courts at Law run $1.5 million.

In other words, to truly prosecute and defend this many capital cases, the expense would be greater than the entire criminal and civil justice system in Cameron County. We would need to shut down the jail and all the courts to be able to fund the prosecutions, but of course then we would have no place to put or try the capital inmates. Either that or cut into indigent health care, burials and road crews.

So if the numbers are impossible, how is it that Cameron County is pretending to prosecute 18 pending capital cases with two on death row. I have a couple of guesses. One is that many of these 18 shouldn't be capital cases at all and will be reduced, but only after small fortunes are spent to pretend they are capital cases for a while. Another is that the judges will try to defend these cases without spending this much money.

Every old-time criminal lawyer has a story about how he was made to take a capital case, worked on it for months or years and then either not paid or paid a pittance. Other horror stories abound of expert witnesses who were stiffed. Differently put, the county pretended to pay for the defense of capital cases, but did not. So the quality of justice was low, which means in in a capital case that the risk of executing the innocent was high.

The law has changed in the last few years so that if the lawyer falls asleep in the course of the trial of a capital case or the trial judges refuse to pay for needed expert witnesses, the cases will be reversed and sent back to be tried again. For a defense to be constitutional, every defendant must have a mitigation specialist thoroughly investigate the background of the defendant and present that information at trial to support life rather than death. He must have a psychologist on the trial team. He must be able to investigate the facts and have experts who can analyze the physical evidence. He must have parity with the state in resources.

As far as I can tell, these minimum requirements have not been met in the past. Under these conditions, if things are not done better now than they were before, Cameron County may produce some death penalty convictions, but they won't be legal.

We will enter into an endless cycle of cheap, illegal trials that have to be redone because no one has the political will to require that indigent capital defendants receive a defense that meets minimum requirements of the constitution. Because of lawyer errors, we will likely get some executions, but we won't really know if the people being executed are guilty.

We pay a high price for cheap justice.

Some Thoughts About Contempt

2008-05-08T22:57:00.003-05:00

A joke lawyers tell: The Judge says to the lawyer, "Are you trying to show contempt for this court?" The lawyer replies, "No your honor, I'm doing my best to conceal it."

A friend gave me the audiotapes of Blink, the Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcomb Gladwell. Gladwell reviews the research of Paul Ekman, beginning with Ekman's teacher Silvan Tomkins.

Tomkins was said to have the capacity to look at faces and describe moods to a level that appeared to be mind reading. Ekman lacked the innate ability, but broke the face down into a measurable coding system.

Now there is a certification in the reading of faces. After a five day workshop and 45 hours of study, applicants are eligible for a test to be certified as a FACS coder. The advertisement for the workshop says, traditionally, the information is learned with 100 hours of self-study of the 500 page FACS manual.

This study seems to largely be the realm of clinical psychologists. Gladwell describes the use of the system to quickly judge couples to see who will stay married. The single most important factor in judging the relationship is the expression of contempt.

Darwin describes the emotion in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: Scorn and disdain can hardly be distinguished from contempt, excepting that they imply a rather more angry frame of mind. Nor can they be clearly distinguished from the feelings discussed in the last chapter under the terms of sneering and defiance.... Nevertheless, extreme contempt, or as it is often called loathing contempt, hardly differs from disgust."

Darwin describes how contempt is shown: The most common method of expressing contempt is by movements about the nose, or round the mouth....

The artist Faigin describes "disdain," which Darwin views as angry contempt. Disdain is expressed in the mouth. The upper lip is raised and flattened in a sneer-- the lip is squared-off in shape. Slight sneer is often asymmetrical with one half of the upper lip active and the other half relaxed. The lower lip is neutral. The signature wrinkle is the nasolabial fold (deepest alongside the nose). The eyebrows and eyes are relaxed.

Contempt is a seventh emotion that Ekman recognized as a universal emotion after developing the original six: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise. The contempt expression is expressed in FACS terms is still being debated by the researchers. They seem to agree it includes AU 12 and 14, but the issue is whether AU 10 is also included. AU 12 is the common smile expressed with the zygomatic major. AU 14 dimples the cheeks with the buccinator muscle. These alone look a lot a smile. Adding AU 10 which uses the levator labii superioris to raise the upper lip, is the quick change in the smile that shows contempt.

Contempt can be largely masked except for a fleeting lapse into the hostility exhibited with the raising of the upper lip. The psychologists film the expressions and then slow them down in able to spot and measure AU 10.

If it is true that contempt is the measure of why relationships fail, this is a valuable fact for making our ways through this hard life.

One of my philosophy teachers in college at UT was Robert Solomon. He wrote a book called Emotions and the Meaning of Life in which he defines contempt as the last of a continuum of resentment and anger. According to Solomon the differences between the three emotions are that:

1. Resentment is directed toward a higher status individual.
2. Anger is directed toward an equal status individual.
3. Contempt is directed toward a lower status individual.

This would give a suggestion that the reason marriages fail (as signaled by the expression of contempt) is that one of the partners believes the other is a lower status individual.

David Hume compares respect and contempt (click the title). Contempt arises when we do not merely observe the "qualities and circumstances" of others, but we "make a comparison betwixt them and our own qualities and circumstances."

Hobbes says "Contempt is when a man thinks another of little worth in comparison to himself."

Built into contempt, then, is the need to not merely observe, but pass judgment on others.

The inferior position implied by contempt is described by Edmund in King Lear:

I will preserve myself: and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape
That ever penury, in contempt of man,
Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;
Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots;
And with presented nakedness out-face
The winds and persecutions of the sky.

Some Brief Notes About Hell

2008-05-06T01:37:00.007-05:00

What is hell? Yes, Kathy, now I have jumped off the deep end.

I can remember being asked once to draw heaven in a Bible school class. I drew a picture of someone climbing up a hill and then sliding down only to begin again. My thought was that the greatest pleasure in life was achieving something (I suspect the thought was more in Bible school age language) and so heaven must be the continued effort without it really mattering if you got anywhere or not.

Only later did I hear about the the Greek myth of King Sisyphus who for eternity was required to push a boulder up a hill in tartarus, the hellish part of the Greek's underworld, only to see it roll down again.

My childhood drawing of heaven looked a lot like the Greek's conception of hell. Back to the drawing board.

From childhood sermons I had heard of a hell of fire and brimstone. Later I read Jonathan Edward's sermon, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God:"

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

I wasn't sure I could swallow that idea of God or hell, but the language still holds me spellbound.

When I read Dante's Inferno in college, my imagination of the sophistication of hell increased. I was particularly struck by the varieties of hell for different types of sinners. Also, I had never thought of Satan in a frozen center, so that was fun. A couple of years ago, I read a murder mystery, The Dante Club, by Mathew Pearl. I enjoyed it and also enjoyed revisiting various types of Dante's punishments. It features Longfellow, who by the way, wrote some of my favorite translations of Spanish literature.

Milton's hell seemed like a great adventure for me. I read Paradise Lost in college. I was of an age when the adventure of being in hell plotting a revenge against heaven was much more appealing to me than Milton's paradise. I agreed with the proposition: To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

I also read about Sartre's hell being other people in "No Exit." It did not hold me spellbound.

For some reason, I have been fascinated by the contemplation of hell. It makes me feel better, but I am not sure why. I know my conception of hell is simple, simple, simple. Maybe, as I approach that seventh decade, I should think more deeply about the subject.

Thoughts about dying and death

2008-05-04T20:50:00.013-05:00

When I told Kathy I was going to write about dying and death today, she gave one of her caustic comments about me opining on another subject about which I know nothing. On the contrary, Kathy, this is the only subject to which I have the same access as all other mortals.

Montaigne (the Granddaddy of All Bloggers, GOAB) makes this point in his Of Practice. We can gain a proficiency through practice in all other human tasks, "But for dying, which is the greatest task we have to perform, practice cannot help us. A man can, by habit and experience, fortify himself against pain, shame, indigence, and such other accidents; but as for death, we can try it only once: we are all apprentices when we come to it."

Montaigne then describes an incident in which he was knocked off his horse by a bigger horse and rider. "It is the only swoon I have experienced to this day," he relates. He didn't think the experience of being close to death, at first, was that bad: "It seemed to me that my life was hanging only by the tip of my lips; I closed my eyes in order, it seemed to me, to help push it out, and took pleasure in growing languid and letting myself go. It was an idea that was only floating on the surface of my soul, as delicate and feeble as all the rest, but in truth not only free from distress but mingled with that sweet feeling that people have who let themselves slide into sleep."

Later he started throwing up clots of blood. And then after two or three hours he began to feel himself caught up in the pains, he says, "...my limbs being all battered and bruised by my fall; and I felt so bad two or three nights after that I thought I was going to die all over again, but by a more painful death; and I still feel the effect of the shock of that collision."

Montaigne in another essay, Judging the death of others, says being dead is not what troubles us, but dying. He quotes (someone completely unknown to me) Epicharmus: "It is not death, but dying, that I fear.

When Caesar was asked what death he found most desirable, he answered (again according to GOAB), "The least premeditated and the quickest." And Pliny, "A quick death is the supreme good fortune of human life."

I have thought that an easy death for me would be by drowning. I once suggested to Kathy that if I fall into senility, she take me to the beach, point out to sea, and tell me to swim to an island paradise. (She wanted to know if it would work right then.)

When I described this plan as an easy death to Brownsville Blogger Stan Raines, he gave me a book of poems he had written, There's More to Blues Than Meets the Eye. One of his poems, The Sea, begins:

When I have reached sufficient age
And experience has filled me up
And the world has drained me dry
I will heed god's call and take me to the sea.

It might be a far worse death than Stan or I imagine, but I had an experience when I was in college that makes me think it might not be the worst of all. I, then, fancied myself the greatest of under-water swimmers. I could take several deep breaths and swim from a lakeside restaurant in Lake Travis to a ski ramp near the other side of the lake. Though, we never did, there was some discussion of taking bets on the matter.

Once, in a pool, with my friends Dan Boyd and Stephen McNally present, I was going to put on a demonstration. I was going to swim laps in the pool far beyond anyone's expectations and to universal amazement and admiration. I did. However, at some point I stopped swimming and began to sink. The only thing I remember was Stephen pulling me out and telling me that my competitive spirit was in conflict with the likelihood I would enjoy a long life.

That wasn't so bad. I lost consciousness and it may have been I would have been unaware of the dying part and gone straight to the death. I'm glad it didn't happen then, and I don't want it to happen any time soon, but, Lord, may I be blessed with an easy way out.

Sherwin B. Nuland is a favorite writer of mine on death. One way to judge a book is to look at the index. If it quotes Montaigne, it's a keeper. Nuland, a surgeon from Yale, in his book How we Die, quotes Montaigne twice. (He also quotes Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Laurence Sterne. What a guy.)

Lawyers don't have to see much death, but some of us must hear many very good descriptions of death. Nuland, on the other hand wrote about death after seeing it at close hand over a long career. He says he would like to have a death without suffering, but the overwhelming odds are against it: "Like most people, I will probably suffer with the physical and emotional distress that accompany many mortal illnesses, and like most people I will probably compound the the pained uncertainty of my last months by the further agony of indecision--to continue or to give in, to be treated aggressively or to be comforted, to struggle for the possibility of more time or to call it a day and a life--these are the two sides of the mirror into which we look when afflicted by those illnesses that have the power to kill."

So I will be most likely trapped as well. Stretching out the agony with the hope of recovery or at least a little more time.

Nuland reminds us of the words Shakespeare gives to Julius Caesar:

Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,
It seems to most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Supporting the Northern Wall

2008-05-02T23:50:00.004-05:00

Tancredo says we should build the wall north of the city. If a wall is to be built, maybe we should. Tancredo and his ilk can be dangerous.

Tancredo went to Miami and declared it a Third World Country. He compared his reception to that he would have received in Havana and talked about the "thugs" who opposed him.

So Brownsville got off light in the Tancredo mauling. Tancredo's level of viciousness is unusual for someone holding public office, but it is certainly not new to the American scene.

I remember undisguised fear, hatred and bigotry even as a child in McAllen. It was just OK to tell the Jewish kids that they had to answer for killing Jesus. It was also OK to speak openly about the laziness and tendency to steal that was part of the Mexican character. Racist jokes and skits were part of Church entertainment. We did not see any African-Americans, but where they fit in this scheme was clear.

I had little trouble assuming that I was most likely superior to a Mexican or a Jew. I heard this in polite society. Some of the kid's parents talked about these things. Not usually when a Mexican or a Jew was around, but when it was just us, then it was fine. It would not have been wrong if we were not among ourselves, just impolite.

This was not universally true. A visiting preacher talked about the song, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world." He had been a missionary where there were children red or yellow or black or brown and he didn't like this racism. The parents were polite to him too, but there was discussion that he had "gone a little native" with all the time he had spent in other countries.

It would also turn ugly. We had fights based on race. The older students bragged about driving into the Mexican part of town with a blank pistol to shoot at people point blank out of the car window just to enjoy their fear.

There is no reason to believe Tancredo himself would ever be a vigilante. He has the mantle of respectability and at a certain level of power, it is easy to keep your hands clean.

But the vigilante man is fixture of the American landscape. Modern so-called "minutemen" organizations guarding the border in their lawn chairs and coolers are not yet particularly menacing, but they can get there. Tancredo went out and told the forming minutemen organization that they were "genuine American heroes."

Writer and historian Mike Davis in his collection of essays, In Praise of Barbarians:

The vigilantes are back. In the 1850's they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870's they terrorized the Chinese; in the 1910's they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920's they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930's they welcomed Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot. Vigilantes have been to the American West what the Ku Klux Kan has been to the South: vicious and cowardly bigotry organized as a self-righteous mob.

Davis describes Tancredo's genuine American heroes:

In any event, they turned out 150 sorry-ass gun freaks and sociopaths who spent a few days in lawn chairs cleaning their rifles, jabbering to the press, and peering through binoculars at the cactus-covered mountains where several hundred immigrants perish each year from heatstroke and thirst.... Confronted with the Minutemen and the hundreds of extra border patrol sent to keep them out of trouble, campesinos simply waited patiently on the Sonora side for the vigilantes to get sunburned and go home.

The Minutemen had apparently imported themselves for their show. The greater danger arises when the local interests get riled. Steinbeck describes the process like this:

Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry....They said, "These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights."

And then:

The local people whipped themselves into a mould of cruelty. Then they formed unites, squads, and armed them--armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand.

Perhaps the story that King Christian X of Denmark donned the Star of David to protect the Jews of Denmark is apocryphal. But the idea is solid. If the City of Brownsville were to build even a short and inexpensive wall north of the city, we could give a concrete repudiation to Tancredo.

An Eye For an Eye

2008-05-02T01:09:00.006-05:00

People keep saying to me, "an eye for an eye." I suppose I bring it on myself, but they look at me and as if I have forgotten something obvious that can be put right by a simple reminder they say, "An eye for an eye."

Once the reminder is given, I believe I am expected to say, "Oh yes, you are right. How could I have been so foolish. That's right, "an eye for an eye." And then I will change my mind about whatever silliness I had said before and the world is properly ordered again.

"Eye for an eye" comes out of Exodus. God has led the Israelites out of Egypt, but they need some rules to govern themselves. First, God gives the Ten Commandments. Then He tells Moses that there are rules Moses must give to the Israelites.

"If someone buys a male Hebrew slave, the master has to let him go in seven years, unless the slave loves the master then the master can pierce the slave's ear with an awl and the slave will serve for life."

"If someone curses or strikes his father or mother, he will be put to death."

"When a slave-owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property."

And then if people are fighting they injure a pregnant woman, and she only has a miscarriage, but no other injury, they have to pay her husband a fine, but if there is other injury (apparently to the injured pregnant woman). "If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Moses then goes on with some other rules:

"If a thief is found breaking in, and is beaten to death, no blood-guilt is incurred; but if it happens after sunrise, blood-guilt is incurred."

"When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife."

"You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live."

"Whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death."

Then there are a couple that I like that are seldom mentioned:

"You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."

"If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. "

Differently put, even for the time the laws of the Israelites were given, it is a little difficult to expand this law to include killing all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he got all of the innocent people out first.

Some of us aspire to be, or pretend to be, or think we are followers of the teachings of Jesus. What did Jesus make of this eye for an eye?

Jesus' words parallel those of Moses. Instead of the Ten Commandments, He gives the Beatitudes. Then Jesus states a series of laws and provides for a different reaction to the law that goes beyond the law and provides for mercy. In particular about the "eye for an eye," He says:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

I am no scholar of the Bible, but somehow this does not sound to me like Jesus is insisting on capital punishment.

As Gandhi suggested, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind."

It seems to me the complete statement when using "an eye for an eye" as an argument for retaliation should be something like this:

"I know Jesus fulfilled this law of retribution by providing for a higher law of love and mercy. I know He said the only true law was to Love God and Love Other People. I know He said not to resist an evil doer. But I don't accept Jesus' teachings. He is wrong about these things. My sense of justice says that Jesus may even be immoral or crazy for suggesting such a thing. I want to go back to the law Moses, and at least if a pregnant woman is injured when people are fighting we should knock out the eye of anyone who knocks out her eye. And we should kill all the witches."

Civilian Deaths in Aerial Bombing

2008-04-30T22:54:00.006-05:00

Pax Christi is meeting next week to decide whether we will have a gathering this summer called 2008 Hiroshima Day.

One stated purpose last year's gathering was to "recognize the terrible consequences of war."

Three planes flew toward southern Japan from Tinian, an island in the west Pacific Ocean, for 6 hours on August 6, 1945. One was an instrumentation plane, one was a photographer's plane and the third was the Enola Gay, named after the group commander Colonel Tibbet's mother. On the Enola Gay was a gravity bomb named "Little Boy" armed with 130 pounds of uranium.

Japanese early alert radar had picked up the planes about an hour before the bomb fell at 8:15 in the morning, but since there were only three planes, the alert was lifted. The Japanese had decided not to intercept such small formations to save fuel.

The bomb fell nearly a minute before exploding about 1900 feet above the city. A radius of a mile was completely destroyed and a radius of four miles was burned up. The immediate death toll was 70,000 people. Estimates of the number of dead by the end of the year 1945 were 90,000 to 140,000. Within 5 years the death toll most likely reached 200,000. About 20,000 of the dead were Korean's conscripted into forced labor in Japan. There were also prisoners of war.

Legal challenges to the bombing have largely been based on the targeting of civilians, most of the people killed in Hiroshima. Treaties from the Hague beginning in the early 20th Century attempted to limit civilian deaths.

Aerial bombing was considered so horrific it was banned even before it was invented. The Hague Convention of 1899 stated: "The Contracting Powers agree to prohibit, for a term of five years, the launching of projectiles and explosives from balloons, or by other new methods of a similar nature."

In 1923 a Draft Treaty on Aerial Bombardment was supported by the United States including the following language:

The bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces is prohibited. In cases where [military targets] are so situated, that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment.

Now this language seems old-fashioned. We are accustomed to aerial bombardment of civilians. But the early treaties and conventions largely reflected a convention that there could be no moral justification for bombing civilians.

Bomber pilots seem to sometimes wind up being those most eloquently opposed to war: Joseph Heller, Howard Zinn, and George McGovern, for instance. Kurt Vonnegut had the vantage point of being a prisoner of war in Dresden when it was firebombed by the Allies.

Even with the new, supposed precision bombing, civilians are overwhelming the victims in modern warfare. A group called iraqbodycount.org has measured civilian deaths in Iraq since early 2003. These are only civilians; deaths in combat are not counted. Today's numbers are 83,221-90,782.

When All the World Dissolves

2008-04-29T22:25:00.007-05:00

I recently read Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits. This is an article by novelist Wendell Berry that appears in the May 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine. Berry says:

We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens. (Perhaps by devoting more and more of our already abused cropland to fuel production we will at last cure ourselves of obesity and become fashionably skeletal, hungry, but–thank God!–still driving.)

When I was in college my economics teacher, Clifton Grubbs, talked about what it would be like if gas were $5.00 per gallon. It was actually then about a quarter a gallon, so he was talking about an increase of twenty times the price. Even accounting for inflation, gas is more expensive than it was then. That quarter of a gallon gas would still be under $2.00 now, so the $3.50 or so we are paying at the pump is less than double, but a 75% increase.

Under Grubbs' scenario, gas would cost about $40.00 per gallon now. His idea was that if gas were really to pay for the costs involved in its use, including the clean up afterwards, prices would be this high.

If gas were this expensive, society would rapidly reorder itself. I have trouble imagining it but it seems, as a beginning, downtowns would become prime real estate and people would walk and ride bicycles more. Probably, also, whole other industries would come to a screeching halt: vacations, airlines, trucking. And then the industries that rely on those things would collapse such as hotels and grocery stores.

A friend made a trip to El Salvador last week. He has been traveling back and forth for most of the forty years he has lived in Brownsville and he tells me that with the price of corn and rice so high, conditions are dire. People are starving.

Berry in thinking of our predicament is brought back to Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: Berry describes the desire of Dr. Faustus, so much like our modern approach to control "all Nature's treasury," to "Ransack the ocean.../ And search all corners of the new found world..."

The warning is that where we have no limits, hell also becomes limitless.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be:
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

Berry is a farmer first and a writer second, so a local economy based on growing much of your own food does not intimidate him.

The distributists also are big on locally grown food on personally owned, mortgage-free land. With the price of grain spiking, it is easy to be held for ransom if you have no control over your own food.

Now my tomato plants have always died and I'm too fat to keep a garden comfortably. Do you suppose sloth and gluttony are kin? How about control of our food and control of our freedom?

Texas, Bloody Texas. Cameron, Bloody Cameron.

2008-04-27T16:20:00.007-05:00

Texas had 60% of the death penalties in the country in 2007. Of the 42 executions in the nation, 26 were in Texas. The next two highest states were Louisiana and Oklahoma, with 3 each. It is as if the proximity to Texas increased the numbers.

David Dow, a law teacher at the University of Houston believes the other states will continue to decline and soon Texas will have all the executions in the United States:

“The reason that Texas will end up monopolizing executions,” he said, “is because every other state will eliminate it de jure, as New Jersey did, or de facto, as other states have.”

The last man killed in Texas was Michael Richard. On September 25, the Supreme Court accepted a review of death by lethal injection in Baze v. Rees. That same day, Richard's lawyers came rushing in with a stay of execution a few minutes after 5:00 p.m. Presiding Judge Sharon Keller instructed the clerks, without consulting the other judges, to refuse the filing. That same evening Richard was executed.

In an Austin-American Statesman article, the judge in charge of the case Cheryl Johnson was quoted as saying her reaction was "utter dismay."

"And I was angry," she said. "If I'm in charge of the execution, I ought to have known about those things, and I ought to have been asked whether I was willing to stay late and accept those filings."

Overall, though, the number of executions are declining. And there is hope there will be fewer in Texas sent to death row because Life Without Parole is now available.

When Texas passed life without parole in 2005, it was already available in 47 states. Senator Eddie Lucio deserves the credit for its passage. Sen. Lucio sponsored the bill and was its primary moving force in the Senate. Gov. Perry signed it. Pax Christi members are grateful to Sen. Lucio for his support of the bill. We don't know if it would help him or hurt him to have our support, so we will leave that decision to him. I believe he has saved about 15 lives a year as a result of the change, and may begin to change Texas' reputation for being the most blood-thirsty of states.

As well as I can count by the numbers currently on death row are trending as follows:

2002 33
2003 28
2004 23
2005 15
2006 11
2007 15
2008 1 (to date)

The life without parole option is of course not the only factor in reducing the death penalty. DNA exonerations are also important. In 2001 Governor Rick Perry declared a legislative emergency after he pardoned a man who had served 15 years after being wrongfully convicted of rape. He fast-tracked a bill that allowed convicts to get state-funded DNA tests if biological evidence was available and they could show that ere was a reasonable chance of exoneration.

Of the first 32 tested in Dallas County, 12 were exonerated. On April 15, Dallas County announced its 16th exoneration. Even the Dallas Morning News, after a century of supporting the death penalty, declared that it doubted that Texas could guarantee "that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder."

In modern times, Cameron County has sent at least 6 people to their deaths by execution. One had never been to prison before, was identified, not at trial, but in a dying identification from a photograph. His last words: I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight. May God bless you all. I am ready.

The Peace Bishop

2008-04-26T18:14:00.011-05:00

So who are these people, the Pax Christi? I first ran into them in the early 80's and they were people completely outside of my experience.

I was a backslid Baptist and had no interest whatsoever in self-sacrifice for any purpose. These people seemed to waltz into prison without a second thought. And not even for some risk that might have brought a shot at some big bucks. Incredible.

There didn't seem to be very many of them. I supposed going to prison for religious reasons tended to winnow those few pieces of weighty grain from all the rest of us light little pieces of chaff the wind could blow away.

For me, Bishop John Fitzpatrick was the center of it all. He was the Bishop in Brownsville from 1971 until 1991 and I bumped into him only rarely, at a restaurant or a meeting. I wish I could report I felt some type of religious awe, but in those days (and maybe now) my religious awe receptors were blunted. I felt a different type of awe. The type of awe I felt around dangerous people: Billy Jack the junior high school bully, biker friends of my brother in Austin, the antiquities smuggler from Mexico, the reputed hit-man from up the Valley.

For one thing, he scared me because he was unafraid of a federal judge.

The Bishop and the Federal Judge were in a head to head dispute. The Federal Judge was a devout Catholic and was standing on THE LAW. The Bishop, GOD'S LAW.

The faithful, including the director of Casa Romero, were helping refugees from El Salvador. They were "transporting" refugees in violation of federal criminal law. So they were being prosecuted.

This is how the Fifth Circuit describes the Bishops position:

Bishop John Fitzpatrick, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, testified that meeting material human needs represents an essential aspect of Christianity, and that each individual remains free to fulfill this obligation according to the directives of his or her own conscience. Although no law of the Roman Catholic Church specifically requires Roman Catholics to provide sanctuary or rides to Salvadorans, Bishop Fitzpatrick believes that providing such assistance constitutes an appropriate expression of the Christian gospel.

I was, in those days, still trying to be a good lawyer which I thought meant supporting THE LAW. But in this dispute I knew that the Bishop was expressing one of those self-evident truths. You, know, that thing about being created equal and endowed by our Creator with those inalienable rights. So, I knew the Bishop was right and the Judge was wrong. This from a backslid Baptist.

Of course, though when the law and God's law come into conflict, people of conscience go to prison. This was the Pax Christi.

So who are these Pax Christi? They support "Christian nonviolence on the personal, communal, national and international levels...nuclear, conventional and domestic disarmament, an end to the international arms trade, economic conversion to a non-military economy, conscientious objection, and nonviolent alternatives to war...the struggle against economic injustice, militarism, and environmental destruction which are particularly harmful to those who are poor, minorities, children, and women...and universal human rights, both at home and abroad, through solidarity with oppressed and marginalized people struggling for dignity."

The group was formed just after World War II when German and French Catholics met to discuss the senselessness of having killed each other by the millions in just a few years. It came to the United States in 1972.

OK, how did that fit me? Well, first I wasn't religious and second I hadn't exactly been a pacifist. It is true, I had opposed the Viet Nam war, but this conviction only came after I drew a number 53 in the draft lottery, pretty well assuring if the war didn't end, I'd be draft. (It did. I wasn't.) Before I drew my lottery number I favored stopping the dominoes and I expressed the certainty that, "Some things are worth fighting for." (Yes, even the grammar was bad).

And not being a pacifist, although I had the courage for the occasional fist fight in High School, I certainly didn't have the courage to stand up to a federal judge as a lawyer. So before the Pax Christi Bishop and the Pax Christi members, I stood in dread and wonder.

I haven't gotten much braver as the years have passed, but I have come to the view this fearless, small group are right about most everything. Kathy and I converted to Catholicism. And now, when I have money for dues, I join to get the newsletters and to the extent my faint-heartedness permits, I participate.

They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild

2008-04-24T21:00:00.011-05:00

Pax Christi is a Catholic Peace Organization. We have a meeting Monday, April 28 at 7 pm in the conference room at the St. Mary's Parish Office, 1300 E. Los Ebanos Blvd. The Office of State Representative Eddie Lucio III report to Pax Christi representatives that Rep. Lucio will be present to review death penalty issues. This is open to the public and we encourage you to come. Your presence will not be taken as an indication that you agree with the views of Pax Christi. I will make a presentation with a nifty power-point presentation and my usual good-humored acceptance of people who disagree with me.

I have been practicing jury selection questions about the death penalty with my friends in hopes of getting myself ready for a trial. The responses (from those people who did not simply run and hide from me) have been surprising both to me and the ones I was questioning. In hypothetical questions, people who viewed themselves as anti-death penalty voted for death and some who viewed themselves as favoring the death penalty in the hypothetical questions opted for life without parole. There also seems to be little correlation between views on the death penalty and other political views. There are a lot of pro-life conservatives and pro-death liberals.

Carefully formed intellectual constructs about the death penalty are blown away even when a hypothetical question is posed informally. I am not sure any of us really know what we would do if truly faced as a juror with the decision to kill or not to kill.

So I will offer a hard case for the conscientious objectors among us. (I pray that if the moment of truth every arrives for me I would still find myself among that group--but who knows?) Hard cases are legion. This one is from today's news:

The Birmingham News announced the death by pancreatic cancer of serial killer Daniel Siebert this week. Siebert had been on death row for 22 years and had been one day from death last October, but was granted a stay because of the challenge to the means of lethal injections.

He murdered with slow strangulation and had five victims in Georgia including his girlfriend, a student at the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind, and her two young children and another woman in the apartment complex where they lived. He confessed to another 13 murders nationwide.

Even while on death row, Siebert had been uncommonly odious. He made sexually exploitive and sadistic drawings that were peddled for money on a website devoted to what it called "Murderabilia." This brought a call from the Alabama legislature to find a way to stop the trade for profit of death row drawings.

The children of a victim issued a statement and expressed disappointment that Siebert had died of natural causes before execution.

What am I to make of this?

The law calls the response retribution, and there have been times when I have thought that this was the only argument for punishment that was irrefutable. A desire for vengeance--this, I have experienced and can understand.

My fantasies and sometimes dreams in my sleep of retribution, vengeance against someone who had wronged me (many fewer now that I am getting old) always involved an act by my own hand. Gun, knife, strangling. My imagined wrongdoers to whom I owed a righteous vengeance were always rivals I feared. Another lawyer, maybe, or a politician. Some of those people became my friends as years passed. Maybe my own fear that I have the potential for violence may have been a factor in moving me to a philosophical position of non-violence.

And of course those philosophical world views that we develop for ourselves may or may not survive the anger in the heat of the moment. My Dear Old Dad used to warn me about pacifists: "Be careful, those guys are killers." I am not sure if this was just his love of the paradox or he had some basis for the belief. He claimed he and other surgeons entered the field as a way to direct sadistic impulses--a socially acceptable way to cut people. I can imagine the pacifist who reacts in this way to control violent impulses. Something like the person who decides to become celibate to avoid being a sexual predator.

Why though, wasn't the life of misery and the horrible death of Daniel Siebert satisfying to victim's children? Twenty-two years on death row. One inmate describes the experience like this:

We are kept in constant confinement, locked in-cell all day long - except for the five days a week we are allowed one whole hour outside (in another, slightly bigger, cage). Cell temperatures are kept cold and breezy by powerful forced-air vents, yet permissible clothing is limited. All meals are served in-cell, on a filthy tray shoved through a slot in the door. Showers? For us, it's three times weekly. As for visiting, we are limited to two hours per week, with added physical restrictions: all death row visits take place in a 4' x4' separation booth, behind a barrier. (All this after prisoners' family, friends and attorneys' drive many hours to reach this remotely-located prison.)
This from a Robert Buehl incarcerated in Pennsylvania.

And then death by pancreatic cancer, normally a relatively rapid death (months of agony), but an especially painful death, even under the best of conditions with morphine and hospice care. And from what I know of prison medical care, I suspect Mr. Siebert's care in Alabama was less than ideal. (If I knew the choice was lethal injection or pancreatic cancer for me in an Alabama prison, I may well be too afraid of the cancer pain. Like those people who jump to their deaths out of a burning building).

The victim's children reported they did not have a sense of satisfaction from this end to Daniel Siebert.

Would an execution have actually been better, though? I don't know.

I do believe that we who choose to defend those accused of capital crimes (either in or out of court) must be willing to face the worst of cases and be willing to face the suffering caused the victims.

My Pity Wanting Pain

2008-04-23T17:04:00.007-05:00

So is she really in pain or is she faking. After the car wreck, she complains of pain. Her doctor says she is hurt. The insurance company's doctor says, no, the wreck wasn't bad enough and she is only pretending to be hurt.

There are sometimes objective findings like muscle spasms or herniated discs or even broken bones, but a lot of the claim depends on whether or not the complaints of the patient are true.

Then there is the other side of the story. The employee who fell at home in the bathroom, but won't admit to being hurt for fear of losing the job. The athlete who denies an injury.

So, once we develop these face reading skills, can we tell who is in pain and who isn't? I think I can see pain in a client's face. (Yes, yes, Kathy, I know I think I can do anything, but I am really just full of......) I look at their eyes and if the muscle around the eyes are contracted (These as we will discover are the orbicularis oculi.) and there is extra moisture in the eyes, they are really in pain. Of course, I have no ideas whether this scientific approach produces false positives or false negatives, but I do think if I see it, a jury sees it also and will agree with me the person is hurt. For a long time, this is how I have picked the cases I want to try, regardless of what the medical records say.

My main sources on reading faces deal mainly with acute pain and so they describe a stronger reaction.

Darwin starts with animals and notes the writhing around "with frightful contortions" and "piercing cries or groans." Almost every muscle is brought into action and "with man the mouth may be closely compressed" or with lips retracted and teeth clenched or ground together. Like the "gnashing of teeth" in hell.

The eyes stare wildly, the brows are heavily contracted, perspiration bathes the body and drops trickle down the face, the nostrils are dilated and often quiver, and the breath is held until the blood stagnates in the purple face. Pain starts as stimulate and excites to action, but if severe, soon induces extreme depression or prostration. So says Darwin.

My face artist, Faigin, breaks the face down into parts.

Eyebrows: The entire brow is lowered, especially the inner corner which is sharply downward. There is a roll of skin piles up above the eyebrows (The action of the corrugator muscle).

Eyes: The eyes are reduced to a single line by the compression of the orbicularis oculi. The stronger the action, the straighter the line Faigin draws to show the eye.

Mouth: Either opened in a clenched-teeth grimace or opened in a shout. The upper lip is stretched upward and outward. (Action of the risorius/platysma and levator labii superioris).

Signature Wrinkles: Crowsfeet with the lower lid folded, star-wrinkles from the inner eye, vertical lines between the brows and a joined crease from nose to chin.

The face scientists with their FACS testing say the bulk of the information about pain conveyed by facial expr4ession is represented by 4 actions: brow lowering, orbit tightening, levator contraction and eye closure. (The levators are on the sides of the nose in three different branches under the eye orbits).

Facial expressions can be used to measure pain in infants and senile patients who cannot express themselves.

The scientists also find different face muscles involved with different types of pain: electric shock, cold, pressure and pain resulting from cutting off of the blood to a nerve.

The scientists took a bunch of back patients and then manipulated the leg to make them hurt so they could observe pain. They also told them to fake a facial display of pain. The patients could mask or hide pain and they could voluntarily make painful expressions that "tended not to differ qualitatively from the genuine display but was more vivid or intense."

Faked pain expressions were much like genuine pain, but they were more extreme and had the added factor of AU12, the lower lip pull, in which the lower lip corners are pulled back and upward. Genuine pain tended to blink more than faked pain. When trying to mask pain, the patients could disguise all of the symptoms except AU7, the tightening of the eyelids, narrowing the eye opening.

The hardest part to fake the pain or hide the pain is, then, in the eyes.

Dear Raulito, please give a message to our new President if you see her.

2008-04-22T00:07:00.004-05:00

Well, Raulito, this arrest of the Women in White is not good news. That's fidelista stuff and we need to turn over a new leaf. While you are at it, I suggest you go ahead and cut loose all 75 of the dissident husbands.

We want a new level of tolerance to go along with our distributism. After all, I'll bet when each of those husbands gets his own little plot of land, gardening will become more interesting that protest and with all of the changes you will be making, there will be little to protest against.

I know, I know, George W. and his predecessor have their own violations. I have met with protesters who spent six months in the Federal Prisons for protesting at the School of the Americas.

And of course the Berrigan Brothers. And all of those conscientious objectors.

And then there are those reservists and soldiers who change their minds about going to Iraq. Some were recruited as minors.

I sometimes teach with one of Mumia Abu Jamal's lawyers.

Yes, Raulito, it is true, the Human Rights Watch faults the United States for Guantanamo, torture, secret prisons, detainee abuse, incarcerating a bigger percentage of the our population than anywhere else, death penalty, juvenile life without parole and abusing the rights of non-citizens. Whew.

Cuba, though, appears to have the worst record in Latin America. You have the death penalty and bad prison conditions like us, but Human Rights Watch gives you bad grades on other things:

Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent. There have been no significant policy changes since Fidel Castro relinquished direct control of the government to his brother Raul Castro in August 2006. The government continues to enforce political conformity using criminal prosecutions, long-term and short-term detentions, mob harassment, police warnings, surveillance, house arrests, travel restrictions, and politically-motivated dismissals from employment. The end result is that Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law.

I highlighted that second sentence, because I want you to know everyone is hoping you will show Fidel how it's done.

I also know that George W. has been unwilling to talk to you, but maybe a little more distributism and some fewer long-term and short detentions will make it less embarrassing to hang out with you.

Hillary and Obama have both said they (with conditions) they will talk to you. And Nixon went to China; so maybe McCain would work things out with you.

If you see any of them, would you mention the problems we have with people drowning trying to cross the river near Brownsville and the tent city in Raymondville and all of these death penalty prosecutions in Brownsville. We could really use some help.

On Hobbes and Kropotkin

2008-04-20T22:03:00.006-05:00

Maybe the political world is divided into a Hobbes-Kropotkin split when judging human nature.

Hobbes thought there would always be shortage of resources so a war of all against all would make life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Kropotkin said mutual aid between members of a species, including people, would give to life "the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution."

If you see people as Hobbes does, a lot of laws and force are needed to reign in the anarchy.

If you see people as Kropotkin does, society needs to leave people alone and things will be all right.

I loved reading the Leviathan. That old-time English warms me. And it has been a while, but what I remember is a curious journey from Adam to monarchy and why God led in that way.

Mutual Aid, though, seems to better describe the world I see.

And the Bible seems to be more of a warning against monarchy to me than an endorsement.

"When Adam wove and Eve span, where was then the Gentleman?" This would be a starting point for me and then the warnings of Samuel, "If you take a king, he'll take your sons and make them drive war chariots, take your daughters and make them make perfume, take your land, take your money." And then, of course, Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount. The pun on "legion" for the swine being driven off the cliff.

I know people often do awful, nasty things to each other. But I think society engineers much of that evil. Racism, for instance. Slavery had to be enforced by laws and force. After slavery was gone, it took Jim Crow Laws and Anti-miscegenation laws to keep races apart.

Little kids play with each other without noticing race. And without laws, romance comes along without much concern for racial differences.

Distribution of wealth would be much more nearly equal if laws did not support the protection of accumulation of wealth with corporations, inheritance laws, and the like.

Most crime that I see comes from poverty or at least inequality of wealth that causes envy.

Inmates who are completely incapable of functioning in society seem to have no trouble organizing and running in an orderly manner 12-step meetings, Big Book and all.

I have probably gotten to know people in jail about as well as I know people out of jail: there really isn't much difference.

On Nose Pointing and Frowns

2008-04-19T09:21:00.005-05:00

For a while in trial advocacy programs there was an inclusion of the occasional anthropologist to help explain juror conduct for the lawyers. I haven't seen much of this in the last couple of decades, but I liked listening to the anthropologists.

I liked anthropology in college, too, and if I hadn't gotten distracted and wound up in law school, maybe I could have been one. Even now when I read a Jared Diamond book, I imagine myself at a young age hunting down Jared and working as an apprentice until I learn the trade.

One thing an anthropologist offered to the trial advocacy students was the pig-nose-pointing observation. In any group, look at where the noses point and you will find the dominant member. This can be important for a number of purposes and most people probably do it intuitively without knowing the rule. The noses are likely pointing to the presiding juror or foreperson. Pick the one to whom the noses are pointing and you know who you must persuade.

Now back to face muscles.

Racehorse Haynes, when asked what to look for in jurors, said, "When he does this, he disagrees with you." Racehorse then made the downward pull of the lips.

Hardly have I had a jury selection since then when I did not notice this reaction to something I said by one or another juror. I accept with Racehorse's reading of the expression. In part, because when seeing it, I will ask the juror, "You disagree with this?" And she will say, "Yes." And it usually emphatic.

The frown or scowl or upside down smile comes from the triangularis muscle, the Downward Puller I, AU 15, "lowers corners of lips." Darwin also calls the pair of muscles depressores angulili oris.

Ekman (our modern face scientist) associates the triangularis muscle with requested actions or simulated emotions. Faigin (our face artist) describes the expression as a frown or scowl. He warns that some people look like they're scowling when they're not. In older faces the creases that extend the mouth corner can look a lot like the way the mouth looks when triangularis stretches it.

Darwin says the muscle expresses low spirits, grief or dejection. He notes that saying a person is "down in the mouth" is the same as saying he is of low spirits. He also relates it the "melancholic insane" saying it is associated with suicide. Darwin also suggests it is a cultural universal based on photographs of "Hindoos, the dark hill-tribes of India, Malays, and...aborigines of Australia."

Dr. Duchenne concluded that this is one of the facial muscles which is least under the control of the will. And that an extremely slight contraction of the triangularis "is sufficient to betray this state of mind."

Faigin says Darwin was wrong in describing the triangularis as the "muscle of grief," because grief also requires another muscle, the mentalis, the "pouting muscle," just above the chin.

Psychiatrists like to know if a patient is suicidal. ("Not on my watch, please.") Mary wants out of the hospital for a day so she can go commit suicide. The shrinks videotape her interview and then after the deed, realize she was lying to them to get out. They watch the video over and over to find evidence of the lies. In a split second before she smiles and answers, they spot a contraction of the triangularis.

This, they believe, is the physical expression of the emotion Mary was quickly masking.

There is Blood on the Moon. Give me that Meat Axe.

2008-04-18T00:02:00.007-05:00

This death thing incites such passions. I have spent the day listening to the play-jurors of Collin County Texas insisting on death. They wanted gruesome deaths. "Well, if we don't give them the needle, at least hang them up and let the families beat them to death."

The polls still put the preference for death at 63%.

Lord help me. For once in my life, I wish I were in the majority. Maybe then, I would get the good feeling of co-religionists all around with a shared view of God and the world. We would all be happy together and the shared happiness would be boosted to a new level. Like Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water, we would bubble over with a new enthusiam and join hands in song.

But it is overwhelmingly difficult for me to join in the song of death.

Derrick Morgan lured a friend to his death and shot him six times in the
head. He was paid $6,000 for the murder. It was a matter of the
invisible hand directing the competition for the sale of narcotics.
Sometimes, a lower price is not the most effective means of
competition.
God bless Adam Smith.

I left North Texas for many reasons, but over all it smelled of death. When an attorney friend took too much heroin on purpose, after the good-hearted judiciary refused to allow him to makejail visits in my cases, the bile just wouldn't stop. Father, forgive them, because I am havingsome difficulty along that line.

How many did George H. W. Bush kill in the turkey shoot? To what are we measuring this evil of Mr. Morgan?

So with this love for death, this fascination with death, (Were the Aztecs really like this? Were those grooves in the rocks really for the flow of blood?) how, in the name of faith, hope and charity can we ever pick a jury who will not kill?

Morgan killed and then twelve jurors chose to kill. What has that miserable little life brought us?

For one, we know the insipid questions of the jury, "Can you follow the law?" "Can you be fair?" "Can you f0llow the court's instructions?" should be frozen in the center of Dante's hell with Satan himself. These innocuous, evil, bland, perfidious, common questions mask the death. The sound of gagging and the sight of foaming at Morgan's mouth is drowned and blinded in the boredom of "Can you follow the law."

Evil is bland. And oppressively stupid.

Any juror who states that he or she will automatically vote for the death penalty without regard to the mitigating evidence is announcing an intention not to
follow the instructions to consider the mitigating evidence and to decide if it
is sufficient to preclude imposition of the death penalty.

Even one, then. Even one juror who will automatically vote for death. Who will not consider mitigation. That one, is enough to preclude death.

What in the world is this animal, a mitigation? A mother's glance. That is enough. Mercy. Yes, that too, is enough. Mitigation is a reason not to kill.

Baze v. Rees-- OK, Let the Killings Begin Again

2008-04-17T08:19:00.002-05:00

According to family lore, my father (for a little while) served as the physician who pronounced death after executions in Texas. I can't remember who told me this, but it could be true.

I guess the method of execution would have been electrocution at that time (the 50's), so a doctor would not have been needed to help in the killing.

The reason I think it may be true is that he and I shared a couple of characteristics: First, we began with a great sense of personal entitlement that put us above any sense of a morality we shared with the rest of the world. In other words, those rules were good for others, but we were different and not really bound by them. Second, we pushed for the excitement of a new experience.

This combination had special harsh consequences for both of us, he far worse than me, at least so far. We did not accept personal limitations, so we learned them the hard way.

Family lore also says (and he may have told me this, though I don't remember for sure) that he was so sickened and guilt ridden by watching the executions and participating in the pronouncing of death that he never really recovered. Because this was not the only thing that haunted him, it may not have been, as we say legalistically, "the sole cause" of his distress, but certainly a factor.

This whole episode set me fairly early against the death penalty. I remember the argumentwhen I was a little Baptist kid in McAllen that if we execute a criminal, he may not have time for the salvation and eternal bliss that God intended for him. I readily grabbed on this reason to oppose the death penalty when superimposed on the nausea that came with the execution stories.

Now, of course, I am more practiced in reasons to oppose the death penalty, but it remains a visceral reaction first.

The Supremes cavil. Even the dissenters don't appear to flatly oppose the death penalty. One of the concurring opinions discusses the ethical objections of doctors, nurses and EMT in participating in executions and the argument that the refusal of professionals to partipate makes it more likely cruel.

If only my Dear Old Dad had been able to benefit from those professional restrictions to protect him from himself.

What Should We Teach Our Children?

2008-04-15T22:00:00.008-05:00

What makes for a good teacher? I was challenged a few days ago to tread on thin ice by an anoynomous commentator. What about the education of children?

I begged Kathy to get in the discussion. After all, curriculum is part of her master's studies, but she was not taking the bait.

How about this for a wild swing at the subject: Through the sixth grade, all of the children will work through Euclid's Propositions, study Greek so they can read Homer, study Spanish so they can read Lope, study French so they can read Voltaire and then read Shakespeare and the Bible. And they should learn to type.

Now, Uncle Toby, a major departure from the subject to warm to the idea of good and bad teachers:

I remember wanting to write my big English paper for the year about Robert Service. It must have been 10th grade or so. I was friends with the "Smart English Student Girls." Not really friends, because they were at a more respectable 10th grade social level, but at least we could talk about poetry. Neither was very good looking by 10th grade standards and I was not even in the game at that age, so there was little to cloud the discussions.

The Daughter of the Banker, Smart English-Student Girl (Please understand, none of us had ever set foot in the British Isles, this was what passed for English language literature in Denton, Texas in the mid-60's. I think they call it language arts now.) told me I could not write about Robert Service. He did not write about nice subjects and besides his poetry was laughable, because it rhymed. The teacher would never allow it.

I can't remember if the teacher allowed the paper or not, but she made it clear that she concurred with the view that Robert Service did not deserve a paper. And I can't remember the teacher's name.

Robert Service was a banker who wanted to be a cowboy or a gold prospector. All of us Walter Mitty's see the world in a similar way. I am a lawyer who wanted to be a prize fighter or a mule skinner. So maybe that was the hold Service had on me.

Our lives overlapped by eight years. He died in 1958. In theory, I could have at the age of seven managed to get over to Lancieaux, France and met the great man before he died.

The things I could have done, if I had just known. I was in Chile in 1972. I could have have gone north and tapped on Pablo Neruda's door. I could have met the great man before he died.

On one occasion I did. C.P. Snow was giving a lecture at the University of Texas in 1969 or 1970. As a freshman student, I had not heard of him, but my English teacher, Maureen McElroy told me to go meet the great man before he died. And I did. (Actually, it was not even a close call because he died in 1980, but it would most assuredly have been my only chance).

Maureen McElroy also taught me about the miracle play. And Marlowe. And Ralph Roister Doister. And Gammer Gurton's Needle

So why was I captured by rhyming poetry? And why was it risible to the Smart English Girls?

Did you know that the Romans did not have rhymes. Latin poetry does not rhyme. This came through the Arabs.

Jorge Green taught me that. And this: "Abenamar, Abenamar moro de la moreria, el dia que tu naciste grandes sinyales abia."

Was it T.S. Eliot who said, "Shakespeare and Dante divide the world between them. There is no third?"

It is like that for me. Maureen McElroy (English Teacher) and Jorge Green (Spanish teacher) divide my little world of teachers between them. There is no third.

Smile and the World Smiles With You

2008-04-14T19:22:00.008-05:00

Artists, including cartoonists, know about face muscles. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both did autopsies. Leonardo did thirty; thirty faces cut up to see how the muscles work.

The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin lists eleven muscles of the face that are responsible for facial expression. Faigin gives six basic facial expressions: sadness, anger, joy, fear, disgust and surprise and then teaches how to draw them based on the actions of the underlying muscles.

The simplest, the smile muscle, the zygomatic major has a fixed end attached to the zygomatic arch and a free end attached to the corner of the mouth. Tightening a muscle and pulling the free end toward the fixed end creates a smile.

It becomes more complicated when combined with different brow positions: smile + lowered brow=sly; smile+raised brow=eager; smile + fearful brow=ingratiating; smile + sad brow= happy/sad. Each different brow position has different muscle movements.

Paul Ekman, the scientist who developed the Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) identifies basically the same six emotions as Faigin, but adds contempt.

Ekman describes the zygomatic major as the Lip Corner Puller and labels it AU12. "Felt smiles" are those that involve the outer portion of the muscle orbicularis oculi, AU6, the Cheek Raiser.

This "felt smile" or "genuine smile" is also called the "Duchenne smile" after a French Neurologist who put electric shocks into people's faces and photographed them to find out how the muscles effect the face. Some muscles are voluntarily exercised (the Lip Corner Puller), some are not (the Cheek Raiser).

Neonates have a Duchenne smile.

We can fake a smiling mouth, but not smiling eyes:

The emotion of frank joy is expressed on the face by the combined
contraction of the zygomaticus major muscle and the orbicularis
oculi. The first obeys the will but the second is only put in play by
the sweet emotions of the soul; t h e . . , fake joy, the deceitful laugh,
cannot provoke the contraction of this latter muscle . . . . The muscle
around the eye does not obey the will; it is only brought into
play by a true feeling, by an agreeable emotion. Its inertia, in smiling, unmasks a false friend.

Darwin used Duchenne's photographs in the development of his arguments about how emotions are expressed in the face.

Now do we get to figure out who the liars are? Ekman concludes, "Some people can indeed detect the differences between different kinds of smiles. We still do not know if training can improve accuracy in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers." So, if we get good enough, I guess, at spotting false smiles from true smiles, we will become human lie detectors?

Wait. Wait. Wait, Dr. Ekman.

Two big problems come immediately to mind. I'm sure there are more. One: the Halley smiling for the camera problem, and Two: the Josh Karton doing Stanislavski problem.

When she was about eight, Halley went on a trip with me. As part of our trip celebration we had a black and white photograph taken. Halley smiled for the camera: zygomatic smile. She didn't show "frank joy," but she wasn't trying to fool anyone. She was just a little girl posing for her picture.

Sometimes we want to smile as a greeting or because others are happy and we don't want to ruin the party. Sometimes we smile to put on a good face for a sad or sick friend. In fact, we are told smiling is a good thing. See, http://www.quotegarden.com/smiles.html.

It can even be tactical: "The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief."

But the zygomatic smile does not always mean a lie. It can be a false positive for lying.

Problem two is the Josh Karton problem. My acting teacher for about twenty years. (I'm not an actor, so this is a whole different story). Josh uses the "system" of Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski. When he expresses joy, he feels joy. He uses his own memories to naturally express emotions.

I have not noticed Josh's orbicularis oculi when he smiles, but I'll bet he can feel joy no matter what he is saying.

The Duchenne smile does not always mean the truth. It can be a false negative for lying.

Those are pearls that were his eyes: /Nothing of him that doth fade

2008-04-13T18:55:00.014-05:00

OK, Readers True, back to the face.

My niece Ana is an engineering student at Carnegie Mellon. The picture you see at the right is an example of work being done there that has the potential to make fine measurements of different parts of the face and face movement from videotapes.

Other attempts have involved maybe a hundred dots on the face that are monitored by software that measures changes.

There are a number of security companies that are hawking products that are intended to allow videotapes of crowds to pick out criminals. These seem to not to have been particularly successful yet, but the technology continues apace.

I was first exposed to the IDENT system for fingerprints about ten years ago when I started representing people accused of illegal entry into the United States. My first reaction was to have my clients refuse to incriminate themselves. How in the world would they ever prove who this guy was and that he was a Mexican national? Well, as a seasoned Assistant US Attorney showed me, they had solved that problem: Automatic Biometric Identification System (IDENT) using automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS).

Every illegal alien would get each index finger swiped in a machine that recorded it. This then could be compared against a database (actually several databases) of other fingerprints to see if the alien was a recidivist or had a criminal history.

The old INS had been experimenting with this system in 1994 and by the time I was exposed to it in 1998 it was hot stuff.

Decades of success in just lying about your name and age ran head on into this new technology. (Can anyone imagine the plot of Les Miserable today with IDENT? Jean Valjean would never get the chance to reform and Javert would be replaced by a file clerk).

Now I love cool new gadgets and technology. I try to get the latest stuff whether or not I can afford it or figure out how to use it.

But advancing technology certainly changes old ideas about fresh starts and second chances. It also makes possible crimes of previously unimaginable magnitude.

I am still getting my mind around the complicity of New York based IBM in the holocaust. Without specially New York designed machines and punch cards to keep track of and route Polish Jews. They calculated rate of deaths per square kilometer due to progressive starvation and the number of Jews to be transported to the death camps. They kept tabs on trains dispatched to and from Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Says Robert Wolfe, the foremost expert on Nazi documentation and formerly chief of captured German records for the National Archives: ``For those who have complained that the proof is not there, this new evidence gives refutation. The juxtaposition of all these sources -- the new German documents, Justice Department records, the IBM files and eyewitness sources -- all together indicate it was not just trading with the enemy, not just IBM and the Third Reich. This is the proof that IBM enabled the Holocaust. The connection to New York is now proven.'' (Click on the title for the citation).

IBM ENABLED THE HOLOCAUST! My Sweet Lord. Why isn't this big news and shocking to all? Why isn't this part of the culture of understanding corporate evil? Why hasn't this monster been destroyed by Justice (Department of) or at least by justice? Why has not the wrath of an angry God ripped Big Blue asunder?

So my love of the new technology always comes with a queasy feeling. What is the human cost to the IDENT system alone. One anti-immigrant website argues there are more than 366,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants. http://immigrationcounters.com/

That may be high, because the Justice Department numbers look like they are closer to 200,000. In any case, the IDENT system has enabled a new efficiency that allows incarcerating huge numbers who w0uld previously have been sent back, unidentified.

I am no longer able to hear about or meet people incarcerated for immigration offenses without seeing in my minds eye, also, young wives and children who are now left to destitution. (Little Cosette cannot be saved by Jean Valjean because he is in Three Rivers federal prison). I know about them because they call and write and visit me. They wait out in the hall at court. These, Readers True, are real people and it is hard to meet them and not have the flesh crawl every time one the young men they depend upon gets duck-walked away in chains.

Automated Biometric Identification Systems for the face are now here and will soon be highly efficient. For a while, glasses or a new mustache would fool the systems, but now some of the new 3-D systems claim they can make an identification even with a stocking over the face and sun glasses.

The data bases for Illegal Entries have been collecting photographs from the beginning. But this is a sea change. Soon it will be possible to take photographs of crowds and identify everyone.

It will also be possible to sort these based on age, gender and race, prior criminal history, income level, house value, employment history, disease history, book purchases, credit card expenditures.

It will be possible to correlate the face with automobile ownership and travel history as recorded in GPS systems. And cell phone use as shown by tower locations and with searches of key words used in the conversations. And e-mail communications based on key words used and internet search history.

Also, check another dimension noted by Mr. Kurgan in his blog for today: http://andyoubrutus.blogspot.com/

If the FACS develops to its full promise, it will be possible to pick out who is worried or frightened or angry. And all this from a videotape of everyone at a football game or a protest march.

Just think what the Nazis could have done with this neat technology.