Anything Smart: January 2017

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Trump's "Muslim Ban" Goes to Court

It may come as a surprise given the fuss that was made over Obama's executive orders, and the fuss that is now being made about Trump's, but there is nothing inherently wrong or controversial about this type of presidential action.

Of course, the President of the United States is responsible for managing the executive branch of the federal government and executive orders are simply one way he does this.

The article linked to below has a lot of interesting and useful information about executive orders. Among other things it informs us that they have been used going all the way back to George Washington and include some very famous events in U.S. history. The Emancipation Proclamation, for example, was one of Lincoln's executive orders.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/27/what-is-an-executive-order-and-how-do-president-trumps-stack-up/?utm_term=.437f078307bb

As I suppose everyone knows, the president is granted certain powers by the Constitution. Over the years, the president has also been granted many additional powers by Congress. One way the president exercises these Constitutional and legal powers is by issuing executive orders.

Whenever a president does something the party opposing him doesn't like the action is going to be politically controversial but, as long as the action is within the Constitutional and legal powers given to the president, he is not overstepping his bounds or becoming a “dictator.”

If the Congress or other citizens really believe a president is doing something unconstitutional or illegal the president can be taken to court. In more extreme cases the president could be impeached and removed from office.

Obama, for example, was taken to court over his order shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. A lower court blocked this order and then the Supreme Court deadlocked on the appeal leaving the order blocked.

Now Trump is being taken to court over his “Muslim ban” order.

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According to this article it appears that four federal judges have at least temporarily blocked parts of Trump's controversial executive order.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/trump-refugee-ban-muslim-executive-order.html?_r=0

We will have to see if any or all of these judges declare parts of this order illegal or unconstitutional and therefore permanently cancelled.

With the very inexperienced, erratic, and dangerous Trump in the White House it is comforting that our courts are still doing their job of protecting the people from abuses of government power.

If you have the time or the interest you can read the full text of the “Muslim ban” executive order for yourself by clicking on this link.

Full text of Trump's "Muslim Ban" executive order.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Review of Matt Taibbi's "Insane Clown President"

I just finished reading Insane Clown President and I am planning to write a substantial review of it but it is important enough that I wanted to get a short review out right away. This book is not always easy to read as it channels some of Hunter S. Thompson's maniacal style from his 1973 Fear and Loathing book about Nixon. The channeling makes sense because Matt Taibbi is Thompson's journalistic descendant as political reporter for Rolling Stone.

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Sometimes this book is hard to understand. The rhetorical flourishes get very elaborate and the obscure references can be very obscure. The book is made up of pieces written during the 2016 campaign so we see the author trying to make sense of a rapidly moving train wreck as it happens. This leads to some confusion and contradictory points of view as the campaign unravels. This is a kind of stream-of-consciousness accounting of the most bizarre and maybe dangerous presidential election in United States history.

But in spite of the difficulties in unraveling the meanings in this book it richly rewards every effort at understanding. It did the most important thing a book is supposed to do (contrary to the views of the ignorant who think books are supposed to spoon feed ""facts" into their passive brains), it forced me to think HARD about what the author was trying to say, which means I was also thinking hard about WHAT happened in 2016 and WHY it happened.

It helped me understand how and why the Democrats let down the working class and how those people took their revenge by doing something FAR worse in electing Trump. It also helped me to understand a little more about the "post-fact" world we seem to be lurching into, where presidents still lie, as they always have, but now they do it openly and shamelessly, because their followers don't seem to care anymore.

And that makes this a very good book indeed.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Bad Cop: Shooting "the perfect dog"

From the press accounts I've read recently about Officer Michael Cruse of Topeka, Kansas he sounds like a real bull in a china shop kind of guy.

In March 2001 he was injured in an accident with his patrol car that also injured four other people.

In April 2002 he was responding to a burglar alarm when he raced through a stop sign, smashed into a pickup truck, and killed 61-year-old Leonard Porter. Cruse was sentenced to one year in jail for involuntary manslaughter but served only 30 days.

While he was still on probation for this killing Cruse was rehired by the Topeka Police Department in 2003.

Officer Cruse got back into the news on July 13, 2015 when he responded to another burglar alarm, this time at the home of retired Shawnee County District Judge Jim Macnish, his wife Harriet, and their dog Josie.

Josie was a 26-pound miniature Pinscher-boxer mix who had lived with the Macnishes for six years. Harriette called Josie "the perfect dog" and said "she was wonderful, and she loved us."

Cruse went into the backyard to look for signs of a break in and Josie, as good dogs do, came running and barking toward the uniformed intruder who proceeded to shoot her dead.

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According to Cruse he had been in danger and needed to defend himself. “I attempted to place time and distance between the dog and myself by running backwards. The dog continued to aggressively run toward me to attack…I…shot the dog 2 times effectively ending the imminent attack”

A heart-broken Harriette held her lifeless pet in her arms for half an hour. Acording to one account Harriette wonders how often Topeka police officers shoot pets and why Cruse is still on the force after his involvement in a vehicular homicide. These are good questions.

As one commentator wrote: "How is it that postal workers, delivery drivers, and door to door salesmen can fend off dogs on a daily basis without killing them but police officers cannot?" More good questions.

I am sure there are thousands of times a day when a little dog runs toward someone barking. The vast majority of the time this happens people hold out their hands and speak to the dog and everything turns out fine.

We need more cops who show restraint and try to defuse situations. We need to get rid of cops whose first instinct is to kill.

Cruse has been involved in at least three incidents now where people or a little dog were injured or killed. That seems like enough evidence to conclude he is a bad cop and needs to find a new line of work.

Check out the links below for more details on this sad incident.

http://www.dogingtonpost.com/police-officers-kills-26-pound-miniature-pinscher-mix-in-backyard-shooting/
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/TPD-claims-shooting-former-Judges-dog-was-justified-320591252.html
http://cjonline.com/news/2015-08-03/topeka-police-officer-fatally-shoots-retired-judges-dog-his-backyard?page=2 (This link includes a graphic video of the shooting.)
http://www.punkrocklibertarians.com/body-cam-shows-cop-backyard-shoot-kill-familys-small-dog/ (This link includes a graphic video of the shooting.)
http://www.dogingtonpost.com/police-officers-kills-26-pound-miniature-pinscher-mix-in-backyard-shooting/
http://www.copblock.org/134806/topeka-cop-kills-again/

Monday, January 2, 2017

Good Cop: Better Get Small

This post originally appeared on my old Good Cops and Bad Cops blog on 14-September-2015. And now it's here.

Fifty-one year old Lieutenant Brian Murphy was a 21 year veteran of the Oak Creek, Wisconsin police department. He had served in the Marine Corps for five years before that. At 10:25 AM on 5 August 2012 Murphy heard the report over his radio of possible shots fired at a local Sikh temple. Arriving at the scene first, he parked his car sideways for cover and tried to unlatch his AR-15 rifle but it wouldn't come loose.

Murphy saw two victims on the ground and moved closer to see if he could help. When he got within 10 feet he could see the victims were already dead and he decided to make another attempt to get his AR-15.

As Murphy turned back to his car he saw the shooter running for a truck. The shooter was Wade Michael Page an ex-GI and a neo-nazi who played in racist rock bands. Murphy yelled for Page to stop and the murderer raised his gun. They both fired at the same time from 30-40 yards. Murphy missed and took a bullet in the chin that also tore up his larynx.

Murphy lost sight of the shooter and got behind his car. The killer circled around and opened fire again. Murphy got hit in the thumb and thought, "Man that's gonna leave a mark." He was hit in the thigh and the upper arm and thought, "Better get small."

Murphy tried to crawl away and got hit in the back of his bullet proof vest. He remembered, "It got very quiet. It got nice and warm. Cozy. I started closing my eyes for a second." Then he decided, "I'm not going out like this. I'm not gonna let my wife down. I'm not gonna let my daughter down."

Murphy crawled some more while Page reloaded and opened fire again. Murphy was hit in the back of the arm, the back of the leg, the back of his skull and he thought, "Jesus Christ, are you ever going to run out of bullets?"

As Page drew even closer, maybe as close as six feet, Murphy thought, "If he gets close enough, there's a knife in your pocket. Stab his ass. Kill the son of a bitch," and then, "My wife is gonna be so mad. We had a vacation to the Florida Keys coming up in less than two weeks."

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More cops finally arrived, Page was shot by one of them, and then killed himself in the parking lot.

As fellow officers rushed up to help Murphy he waved them off; with at least eight bullet wounds from a 9mm pistol he was bleeding heavily but he waved them off and tried, with his shattered voice, to send them into the Temple to help the victims inside where six people had been murdered.

"As they approached him, he waved them off and told them to go into the temple to assist those wounded there," Police Chief Edwards said.

“He could walk through walls, that guy,” his Dad said. “It’s terrible he had to take all those bullets, but he was helping people who were in real trouble.”

Murphy was later honored by a Sikh group who said, "We are highly grateful to him for his sacrifice and exemplary service to law and order and providing protection to all citizens of Oak Creek, including the members of the Sikh community in Wisconsin."

For putting his life on the line and for putting the safety of others ahead of his own we honor Lieutenant Brian Murphy as a very good cop.

For more information click on the links below.