Civil Liberties

No Parking

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My friend Nathan and I differ greatly in our perspective of how and when film crews ought to be allowed to close off parking in the maze that is Manhattan’s Chinatown. You can catch some of our debate here and here.

What it comes down to for me, as a libertarian, is that the film studios are using the coercive power of the state to force (see if the police won’t clear away any protests before you object to my use of the word “force”, especially if the protestor is a lone businessman) the neighborhood into accepting something that will benefit the private film company, and a minority of the businesses there. The difference from the Suzette Kelo case is only a matter of degree.

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Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet

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Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, “Fairness Doctrine” that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums – nothing.

This was first reported to me by Congressman John Culberson (R-Tx) and I asked for approval to cite him and for any media links to this story. He provided the following link of regulations proposed by the Chair of the Congressional Commission on Mailing Standards (PDF) Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass) that was sent to Rep. Robert Brady, Chairman of the House Committee for Administration. The net effect of the regs would be to make it practically impossible for members of Congress to use social media tools to discuss official business or share video of the same with the public while creating a partisan disparity in what little approved messages might be permitted. It would be a very considerable error to assume that the House leadership intends to let dissenting Democratic members post any more freely than Republicans.

Set aside the nakedly partisan aspect of this plan for a moment – on the technological merits alone this may be the goddamn dumbest thing I’ve heard of regarding the Internet coming out of Congress in a long, long time. The dinosaurs who are uncomfortable with computers, the unwashed masses being aware of their actions and free political debate want to turn the clock back to the 1970s. Except during the 1970s no one would have dared to propose controlling what a democratically elected member of Congress could say to their constituents. Doesn’t it register in the Beltway that they are talking about public information that already belongs to the people of the United States? Senators and Congressmen should be interacting with citizens more freely, not less; the U.S. Congress needs radical transparency not greater opacity imposed by the Democratic House leadership to better hide shady dealings

It’s a brazenly Orwellian and most likely unconstitutional power grab by the Speaker of the House unlike anything dreamed of by any previous speaker – not Sam Rayburn, not Joseph Cannon. Nobody.

Nancy Pelosi has finally arrived at a historical pinnacle – as an enemy of free speech and the public’s right to know.

UPDATE:

Given that I was somewhat intemperate in tone in my post and many questions were raised by the other side regarding the document, I’m highlighting my reply to those commenters who felt aggrieved:

Briefly:

1. The old rules were indeed worse than the new proposed changes. They were also not enforced and most members of the House posted as they pleased, much like the rest of us.

2. Putting new, modestly less restrictive rules in place and actively enforcing them results in a de facto large increase in the level of restrictiveness to access social media.

3. What larger public good is served by either the old or the proposed new rules?

4. The complexity of this elaborate gatekeeping system is rife for partisan abuse and selective enforcement that would have a chilling effect on members of Congress using social media. If you think Pelosi is a saint then imagine the system in the hands of Tom DeLay. The pre-publication review is itself a significant barrier to access given the limited time Congressmen have in very busy schedules

5. The rules that seem “reasonable” regarding content and external sites are subjective and are to be interpreted by the majority at the minority’s expense. Again, consider the shoe on the other foot.

6. Changes in the rules of the House of Representatives are done only in close consultation with the Speaker, who appoints the committee chairmen, and the the majority leader and whip. The chance of Nancy Pelosi not being at the table here is about zero. That the issue is being pressed on the Senate side as well indicates that this is a coordinated leadership agenda and not minor tidying up by members themselves.

Quote of the Day

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[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

Justice Scalia, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER

Thomas PM Barnett, Rule-Sets, and Democratic Sovereignty

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In a recent post on the Thomas PM Barnett Weblog, Tom laments the Irish people voting against the Lisbon Treaty:

It is weird how the EU can let one country decide to run a plebiscite and then kill a treaty.   Better is majority like we did with the Constitution.

(I might add that the Constitution wasn’t adopted by the United States by way of a majority; it required consensus of all thirteen states under the Articles of Confederation.   Tom is correct, however, in that Treaty ratification today requires the consent of the Senate, which is not unanimity.   But I digress…)

Tom’s view seems to fall in line with his views on forms of governance around the world:   In the first of his books he discusses the concept of the Rule Set:

A collection of rules (both formal and informal) that delineates how some activity normally unfolds.

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Guess the Nationality!

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Is everyone up to speed on writer Mark Steyn’s troubles up in Canada? If not, you can get a pretty good take on the basics by reading this.

Lots of pundits have weighed in on the fracas, most of whom have very little to say which is interesting or insightful. But I keep reading them because they can sometimes be unwittingly and unintentionally hilarious.

Case in point is this overly long analysis of some of the legal issues involved by a (GASP!) real live lawyer. I found the bulk of it to be just like the same-old same-old that has passed before, until I got almost to the end and found….

“Sometimes, I think a statement or a publication can go too far, and in that case, the right to be free of vilification will outweigh the right to freedom of speech.”

I have little doubt that the majority of you who hail from the United States and who just read the line above greeted it with a snort of derision, or at least a roll of the eyes to go with that moue of disgust that rose unbidden to twist your expression. I also have no doubt that most of you who were nurtured in foreign climes are wondering what we could possibly see as wrong.

Americans live in a country that contains every culture, tribe, nationality, race, creed, and philosophy that exists. The only way for anyone to have a “…right to be free of vilification…” is if the culture is completely homogeneous. If there is an absolute code of behavior, values, and mores that everyone is obliged to follow, then it might be possible. But in a place where two or more cultures rub up against each other?

That is why we are snorting and making moues at our keyboards.

Follow the link above to the source of the quote and you will see that the author is a native of Australia who is currently studying in England. You would think that she would have realized by now, considering how the decisions that shaped her life has caused her to hop continents and experience other climes and cultures, that the statement that a “…right to be free of vilification will outweigh the right to freedom of speech…” is risible. But I also noticed that she started her blogging career writing for a Libertarian blog, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that the very idea of someone being banned from saying insulting things about others is hardly in line with Libertarian philosophy.

I mean, where exactly does the concept of “liberty” come into play in such a case, anyway?

The point to all this (and there is a point for all of you who came down this far in the post), is that this is yet another illustration as to why Americans are more sophisticated than the rest of the world is willing to admit. The government in Canada is so worried about the self esteem of a select few that they have decided to force people to shut up, even though the speech in question is harmless and factual. A law student who has spanned a fair amount of the Earth’s surface seems to think that this is a good idea, only grudgingly ceding that maybe they are going just a touch too far in the Great White North.

But down here in The Land of the Free we realize that the path to advancement is to complain, grumble, and gripe about everything! We know, better than any other people in history, that the only way to see anything clearly is to hold it up to fierce and unrelenting scrutiny. Both truth and falsehood will become apparent in short order, and we trust people to make the right decision as long as the heavy hand of government doesn’t filter the debate.

How can you be more sophisticated than that?

(Hat tip to Mark Steyn.)

UPDATE
It has been pointed out that I made a mistake. The blog I linked to above is a team effort, and the person who wrote the post I commented on is not the Libertarian at the site. Their take on the subject is here.

Click on that last link and scroll down to the bottom to see that they linked to my own post. That was very kind of them, but it seems they were a might peeved over the identity confusion.

“A bunch of very smart economists who should know better have managed to confuse Legal Eagle with me. Mark Steyn didn’t make the same mistake, linking to both posts and noting the difference. Which if nothing else suggests he’s a very careful writer.”

Except that I’m hardly an economist. In fact, few of the writers here are. My own background, for example, is in law enforcement and the civilian use of armed self defense. Whether or not I’m smart enough to have known better I’ll leave to my readers to decide.

I suppose this illustrates the fact that it is easy to make a mistake concerning the identity of someone on a group blog, particularly when that blog doesn’t place signatures on the posts. (Just glance at the line under the title of this post to see what I mean.) Unless you have actually been reading the site for awhile, it would be easy to become confused as to who authored what.