Lie Detectors, Body Cams - Modest Proposal

The president would like to see all policemen wear body cameras. I think the president is right. But I don't think he's going far enough.

If he's really serious, he should demand that body cams be worn by all state and federal politicians, and insist that they record all of their conversations and meetings — every last one! For members of the executive department, he could easily do this by executive order.

After all, he delights in telling us he has a "pen." And while he's at it, why doesn't he demand that every politician wears his own personal lie detector? And when he says, "politicians," he could define the term loosely enough to include candidates for the presidency, House and Senate.

Why am I supporting the president, and encouraging him onward and upward?

I think body cams for cops are a good idea, not because I distrust policemen, but rather because I distrust a great many of the people with whom they are forced to interact. And I suggest body cams and lie detectors because I distrust Washington and Springfield politicians even more! They prove daily that they can do far greater damage.

In the years I was on the bench I handled a small number of cases where I felt the officer used excessive force. In one such case, Suspect A stuck out his foot and tripped the officer pursuing Suspect B. The officer retaliated by whacking the big-footed A with his Mag-light. I felt the officer used a tad more than necessary force, but I really would have liked to have seen a video of the whole transaction. It's entirely possible that the officer's whack was proportionate.

But more often, it wasn't the officer who was in the wrong. I recall one case in the days when I was a prosecutor when a deputy arrived at the scene of an armed robbery as the defendants were fleeing the scene. One turned and fired on the officer. I would like to have been able to see exactly what happened. Did the defendant just shoot in the general direction of the officer to scare him? Or did he take aim and try to kill the officer?

Similarly, if I were a lone officer approaching a stopped vehicle on Interstate 80, in addition to a dash camera, I would want a body camera as I approached the stopped car at 2 a.m.

The dash cam only sees from one angle.The body cam may well show a defendant reaching for a weapon or making a threatening move from a different angle to justify the police officer's response.

But just as dash cams and body cams are useful to protect citizens and police officers from over-reach, I think they may be a good deal more valuable in protecting the public from rapacious and unethical Washington and Springfield politicians. Sadly for too many politicians, body cams would not be enough. For far too many, lying has become a way of life. A police officer's misconduct can hurt individuals; corrupt politicians can injure the whole nation. With a politician it's not enough to see and hear what he's saying.

The average citizen does not have time to fact-check what the president, the speaker, the majority and minority leaders and the candidates are telling them. A lie-detector would save the voters a lot of time, and instantly alert them to fibs, white lies and worse. And if the government can hand out cellphones, why not body cams and lie detectors?

Consider the usefulness of those devices in answering the following questions:

— How does a man or woman with no accumulated wealth when he or she goes to Washington or Springfield, retire 30 years later with millions of dollars in his bank account? If the politician was hooked up to a lie detector, we could ask that question, and know whether his "frugality" explanation was truthful or a lie.

— What could an ex-president or his secretary of state spouse possibly say during the course of a speech that would be worth $240,000 to the payer? Is it possible the payer was attempting to buy influence? Imagine if the explanation had to pass lie detector scrutiny!

— Would Lois Lerner — and whoever talked to her about "giving special scrutiny to requests by conservative groups for tax exempt status" — have done what she/they did, had all government officials involved been wearing body cams in recording mode, and attached to lie detectors?

And what if every meeting with every lobbyist/potential lobbyist had to be recorded on the Congressman's body cam? And be subject to lie detector evaluation?

And since the mark of a true leader is to ask your men to do nothing that you yourself wouldn't do, it seems only right that President Obama immediately strap both instruments on himself — first! Even before issuing his executive order!

Posted: Friday, September 25, 2015 11:00 pm | Updated: 11:06 pm, Fri Sep 25, 2015. QCOnline.com

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

Every Single Life Matters - All of the Time

A group of people, calling themselves "Black Lives Matter" recently marched in Minnesota in support of that proposition. So how do truly concerned people, carrying signs in support of that proposition also chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon"?

Do black lives really matter to people who call for cops -- white or black - to be killed and put in body bags? Would life be better in the black community -- or any community -- if there were no cops? No white cops? No black cops?

After watching the "Black Lives Matter" in Minnesota, a friend of mine said, "If Black Lives Matter, they should matter always, every day, and not just when they are lost at the hands of police." I wholly agree with that, but would go further. I believe all lives matter always.

One-hundred-fifty years ago, Abe Lincoln repeatedly said something that many Americans judged to be politically incorrect. But he may have said it best in his debate at Galesburg with Stephen A. Douglas:

"Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil ...  [and] desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong -- that it may come to an end."

That belief was shared by roughly 500,000 northern men who gave their lives during our Civil War.

Sadly, 150 years after Abe Lincoln and the Civil War, there still appear to be a significant number of people to whom lives -- black, white or fetal -- don't matter.

If you think that I am wrong, ask yourself these questions, and ask yourself if the Black Lives Matter movement even addresses these issues?

Do black lives really matter to the heroin dealer -- black or white -- who sells the drug in the black community?

Do they matter to the cocaine and "crack" dealers -- black or white -- who sell in the black community?

Do black lives matter to the black or white gang member who fires a pistol at a black member of a rival gang?

Who fires down a city street where black children are playing, or sitting on their porches with their mothers or grandmothers?

Do black lives of children matter to the black or white father who impregnates a black teenage girl and them immediately moves on? Who never sees or supports his child? Who never acts as father to his child?

Do black lives matter to the young black woman who aborts her fetus? Is the black fetus a life?

Do black lives matter to the black or white gunman who holds up and shoots the black owner of the neighborhood grocery store or gas station?

Do black lives matter to black or white rioters who burn down black neighborhoods?

Do black lives matter to young black men who drop out of school, and waste a chance to be educated, the same chance afforded young white men in the same school?

Do black lives matter when black and white people march and chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon.”

My bottom line is this: ALL lives matter. For me, "all" includes fetal life, the disabled and the elderly, and regardless of whether those lives are black, white, or any other race or color.

I understand the idea of saying things and doing things to call attention to your movement. But I think it is impossible to have a just society based on hatred and evil. Saul Alinsky rule of "means and ends" is this: "The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; ... He asks of ends only whether the ends are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work."

But if pragmatism is the only test of "means," how would killing all the cops make life in the black community an iota better? How would it stop the drug dealing? Gang shootings? The murder of infants on their front porches? Does anybody seriously believe that all black deaths are caused by police shootings?

In recent days, we have seen a spate of ambushes of police officers doing nothing more that sitting in or driving squad cars. Do this really help the black community? The white community? Anybody?

If we are all created in the image and likeness of God, then how can any man of good will kill his neighbor -- or even call for the death of his neighbor -- who is doing him no wrong?

And ask your self if the Black Lives Matter movement even addresses these issues.

Posted: Friday, September 18, 2015 11:00 pm,  QCOnline.com

by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015

John Donald O'Shea

‘Anchor Babies’, Donald Trump, and Changing the Constitution

Donald Trump has taken the position in his presidential campaign “that the 14th Amendment does not require automatic citizen citizenship for babies born in the U.S. of illegal immigrant parents.”

A mother should not be allowed to gain citizenship for her child (together with the benefits that accrue therefrom) by coming into the U.S. to give birth -- especially illegally.

The U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v Wong Kim Ark (1898) says otherwise.

In 1869, one year after the 14th Amendment was added to our Constitution, in an English case, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn wrote:

“By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.”

Speaking for our Supreme Court, Justice Horace Gray, in Wong Kim Ark, held that the U.S. had always followed the English rule. As such, today’s “anchor babies” would automatically be U.S. Citizens.

Mr. Trump’s position, however, finds strong support in the the dissenting opinion written by then-Chief Justice Meville Fuller. That opinion was joined in by the first Justice John Marshall Harlan -- who is generally considered America’s greatest post-Civil War 19th century judge.

Chief Justice Fuller wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1866 provided: “That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

“The words ‘not subject to any foreign power’ do not, in themselves, refer to mere territorial jurisdiction, for the persons referred to are persons born in the United States. All such persons are undoubtedly subject to the  territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and yet the act concedes that nevertheless they may be subject to the political jurisdiction of a foreign government. In other words, by the terms of the act, all persons born in the United States, and not owing allegiance to any foreign power, are citizens.

“It is argued [in the majority opinion] that the words ‘and not subject to any foreign power’ should be construed as excepting from the operation of the statute only the children of public ministers and of aliens born during  hostile occupation.

“Was there any necessity of excepting them? And if there were others described by the words, why should the language be construed to exclude them?

“If the act of 1866 had not contained the words, ‘and not subject to any foreign power,’ the children neither of public ministers nor of aliens in  territory in hostile occupation would have been included within its terms on any proper construction, for their birth would not have subjected them to ties of allegiance, whether local and temporary or general and permanent.

“There was no necessity as to them for the insertion of the words, although they were embraced by them.

“But there were others in respect of whom the exception was needed, namely, the children of aliens, whose parents owed local and temporary allegiance merely, remaining subject to a foreign power by virtue of the tie of permanent allegiance, which they had not severed ....

“It was to prevent the acquisition of citizenship by the children of such aliens merely by birth within the geographical limits of the United States that the words were inserted.”

Two months after the Civil Rights Act was enacted, on June 16, 1866, the 14th Amendment was proposed, and declared ratified July 28, 1868. The first clause of the first section reads:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The dissenters then noted that, “The act was passed and the amendment proposed by the same Congress, and it is not open to reasonable doubt that the words ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the amendment were used as synonymous with the words ‘and not subject to any foreign power’ of the act.”

Then-Sens. Trumbull and Reverdy Johnson explained the meaning of the words.

Sen.Trumbull said, “What do we mean by ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else; that is what it means.”

Sen. Johnson agreed. “Now, all that this amendment provides is that all persons born within the United States and not subject to some foreign power ... shall be considered as citizens of the United States.”

The main object of the opening sentence of the 14h Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free blacks, Scott v. Sandford, and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States, and of the State in which they reside.

“This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not this subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards, except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired. To be ‘completely subject’ to the political jurisdiction of the United States is to be in no respect or degree subject to the political jurisdiction of any other government.”

Candidate Trump’s position is not presently the law. Does the Supreme Court ever overrule its prior precedents? Sometimes. It might only take one or two new justices

And “President Trump” might well be in position to appoint them. And that’s the easy way to amend the U.S. Constitution.



Posted: Saturday, September 5, 2015 11:00 pm, QCOnline.com
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015
John Donald O'Shea