Law Enforcement

ISIS Attacks American Muslims

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ISIS has released a ‘kill list’ of Minnesota law enforcement. Before the first law enforcement victim gets attacked off that list, there are already injuries, the reputation and community standing of loyal, reasonable, peaceful Muslims who have to get checked off as not a risk of attempting to act on the list. These Muslim american citizens, permanent residents, and visitors have their quality of life degraded every time ISIS or any other extremist organization tries to associate these Muslims with extremist violence. And unlike the law enforcement officers who are on such a list and are statistically unlikely to actually be targeted, the damage to these Muslims is certain and is already happening.

Clearly the bulk of the US response to such a list should be to protect those targeted for death and to try and find the list creators to stop them. But minor injuries are still injuries and are at least a tort. Why not run with it and create a class action lawsuit to recompense the non-radicals for the damage done to their reputation? At the very least it might give some pause to the moneybags of the Muslim world who are currently supporting the violent radicals.

“Breaking the iPhone: Once again, conservative establishment is urgently, insistently wrong”

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J. E. Dyer:

But I don’t have any confidence that the Fox panel would have been smarter if its members understood the issue better. The real problem was that they didn’t come down in principle on the side of privacy. They could have at least expressed regret, or been reluctant about siding with the FBI.
 
But they were slavering urgently for whatever measure the FBI demanded to get into Syed Farook’s iPhone as if all our lives depended on giving law enforcement any privacy-busting capability it sees a need for.
 
Technology doesn’t change the fact that this perspective is the opposite of the perspective of the Fourth Amendment. If our highest priority should be opening the people’s lives up to law enforcement, in case there are terror links lurking in our coupon drawers, then we should throw the Fourth Amendment out and require the people to all give the police keys to our homes, so it will be less of a hassle for them to get in whenever they declare a need to.
 
Conservatives are supposed to be smarter than this. Let’s walk through it briefly to clarify why there is no need to bust the built-in security feature of the iPhone for the FBI’s general convenience.

Worth reading in full.

Don’t you belong on a beach?

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In comment thread of another post, Grurray asked:

“I know the Marines are the best fighting force in the world, but haven’t you had enough of building nations in the middle of the desert? You’re called Marines for a reason. Shouldn’t the future should be closer to the shore?” (sic)

I’ll take the sentiment kindly. Marines usually do fine when compared to other forces. I hesitate to call ourselves the “best” or “finest.” But the Marines are probably as good as any force out there.

As for meat of the question: Marines are amphibious fighters, right? What are you doing in a landlocked country?

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Healthy Lifestyle 24/7

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The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating, to me, article on A Simple Fix for Drunken Driving called Sobriety 24/7 now implemented in North and South Dakota, and Montana.

(DUI) Offenders in 24/7 Sobriety can drive all they want to, but they are under a court order not to drink. Every morning and evening, for an average of five months, they visit a police facility to take a breathalyzer test. Unlike most consequences imposed by the criminal justice system, the penalties for noncompliance are swift, certain and modest. Drinking results in mandatory arrest, with a night or two in jail as the typical penalty.
 
The benefits of the program aren’t just confined to road safety; counties using 24/7 Sobriety experienced not only a 12% drop in repeat drunken-driving arrests but also a 9% drop in domestic-violence arrests. Unlike interventions that only constrain drinking while driving, the removal of alcohol from an offender’s life also reduces the incidence of other alcohol-related crimes.
 
Why do repeat offenders change their behavior in response to relatively modest incentives? Patients continue using cocaine in the face of great harm to their families, livelihoods and physical health, yet they could still be induced to refrain from it when promised a small reward, like $10 for a negative urine test. The reward was relatively trivial, but it was unlike other potential consequences because it was both certain and immediate.
 
It turns out that people with drug and alcohol problems are just like the rest of us. Their behavior is affected much more by what is definitely going to happen today than by what might or might not happen far in the future, even if the potential future consequences are more serious.

Today we were talking to a big data company that can extract enormous amounts of information from your cell phone and make even more incredible inferences about your life style. How long will it be before your wearable will have a bluetooth connection to your phone to transmit all kinds of information on your biologic state? Certainly within two decades, possibly less. It will be able to monitor your body function and relate it to the unhealthy lifestyle choices you made in the last 24 hours.

At least half of our medical costs are the result of behavior that will not happen today and might or might not happen far in the future. Let’s assume that insurance costs $5,000 per person, probably not far off. Would you sign up for a policy that cost only $2,500 but required you to wear the monitor system and took $10 from your checking account and told you what you did the day before to warrant it any time you engaged in sufficiently unhealthy life style? It’s coming within years to auto insurance. I can’t imagine living in that world. That’s why it’s good we are mortal. One can only take a limited amount of change. And progress requires change.

Somewhere Mary Baker Eddy and BF Skinner are smiling.