Peter Krupa

From the New York Times:

… as the administration moves to increase oversight within [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] , the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.

The Supreme Court is poised to strike down restrictions on corporate campaign money that have been in place since Watergate. The case - Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – appears to hinge on freedom of expression and whether corporations and other non-breathing entities deserve the same first amendment rights as people.

At stake is the way in which democracy is conducted in the United States. Allowing corporations to aim multi-million-dollar negative advertising cannons at any candidates who displease them will fundamentally change the rules of the game.

Bill Moyers did an excellent show on this case back in September, in which he interviewed lawyers for both sides. There is, indeed, a solid legal argument to be made in favor of the first amendment, and free speech veteran Floyd Abrams makes it well to Bill Moyers.

But free speech does come with limits. Trevor Potter, the other side of the coin, argues that corporations are entities designed to care about one thing: Making money. And they’re very good at it, which is fine. Real people, however, care about a lot of things – religion, education, foreign policy, criminal justice. It does not benefit society to give so much license to immensely wealthy, artificial entities whose interests are by definition so narrow.

Apparently the case had been brought on some rather narrow grounds, but last year the Supremes sent it back for re-argument, which, as I understand it, is a good indication that they’re about to drop some sort of constitutional bombshell. Whatever happens, the New York Times reports that a combination of court rulings and FEC gridlock mean that campaign finance restrictions have already been worn down to a nub.

Get ready for a fun election year.

I find it deeply disturbing that members of a mainstream American political movement are arguing that the 5th Amendment should be suspended when dealing with certain kinds of criminals. Says some knucklehead over at National Review’s Corner blog:

A terrorist like Abdulmutallab is not a common criminal who should be told he has the “right to remain silent.” He is an enemy combatant, who tried to commit an act of war against the United States of America. He possesses vital intelligence about the terrorist network that deployed him to attack America, and may be planning still more attacks. The Obama administration has a responsibility to make him give up that information. Treating him like a criminal is an abdication of that responsibility, and puts our nation at risk.

Noted conservative luminary Sarah Palin also stated that:

It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal. Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber.

Lest you assume these opinions are limited to the right wing’s intellectual elite, small-town newspaper publisher and Browntown City, Minnesota, Councilman Chuck Warner had this to say:

“…perhaps action should be taken to reverse the decision to charge the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a civilian court, rather than a military tribunal. His is an act of war against this nation. It is asinine to give these terrorists the benefits reserved for American citizens.

The time has come to remove the silk gloves and treat international terrorists for what they are.

I laughed when Bush declared war on an abstraction. Now it’s not so funny. It appears people believe we are at war, and that therefore our enemies in the War on Terror (even suspected enemies) do not have rights under the U.S. Constitution.

This is quite the slippery slope. What about the War on Drugs? Can the U.S. government suspend habeas corpus for drug traffickers, just because the executive has declared “war”? What about the soon-to-be-announced War on Irresponsible Journalism? War on Sexual Predators?

I’m being facetious, but only slightly. Spooked by a few ounces of explosives that threatened a couple hundred lives, a large segment of American society is willing – clamoring, even – to tear at our most fundamental civil rights. I take this as an early warning sign that the United States is one major terrorist event away from becoming a very ugly, very dark place.

The AP is reporting that the Nigerian underpants bomber has been indicted on charges of “trying to use a weapon of mass destruction.” (Indictment PDF) Which is really weird, because I thought he tried to set off explosives (specifically, PETN). Aren’t weapons of mass destruction chemical, biological, or nuclear in nature, and therefore capable of, you know, destroying things en masse?

But nope, there it is, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113B (TERRORISM), Section 2332a: “the term ‘weapon of mass destruction’ means… any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title.” Which is to say, basically anything that goes boom, including guns with a bore greater than a half inch (shotguns exempt).

If I were a betting man, I would bet this is a recent (dare I say “post-nine-eleven”?) change in the criminal code, designed to make terrorists appear more sinister/dashing. And indeed, the Web site I cited indicates that Section 2332a (“weapons of mass destruction”) of Title 18 was modified by Congress on January 5, 2009.

I have no idea how one would go about digging up old versions of Title 18 to find out if this is a recent definition. The take-away, though, is that now you can build a pipe bomb (or what the hell, a cannon) and go around bragging that you’re hiding WMD. (Although you might have to be a Muslim for it to count.)

I suspect that the government is, at this moment, screwing the pooch. Starting in November, the government sold the bank bailouts as a way to stave off a truly catastrophic economic tailspin. Just a little priming of the pump, a little life support. Fine.

But what I hear now – from everyone – is that we need to do everything we can to “get banks lending again” – as in, consumer lending – which is insane. That lending is precisely why we got into this crisis in the first place. For the last decade, Americans have been on a debt-fueled spending spree that is completely unsustainable. Borrowing does not create wealth. We need to pause to pay back our debts, and then start actually producing things to generate wealth.

Instead, the government is obsessed with cajoling you into taking out a mortgage, and banks into offering it to you. Great plan.

What’s worse, yesterday’s new plan seems intended to keep the real estate-backed asset bubble inflated by, basically, subsidizing shit, keeping the risk with the taxpayer, and handing the profit to private companies.

Of course the stock market rallied yesterday: We’re about to write those knuckle-heads another check for $1 trillion!

Why we don’t force some banks into bankruptcy, fire the management, restructure them, and sell off the pieces, rather than keep bailing out someone else’s leaky boat, is beyond me.

The Economist comes out in favor of legalizing drugs as “the least bad policy.” They make a very convincing case. Come on people: Prohibition doesn’t work. And we have better things on which to spend $40 billion a year.

I guess if you look at the facts, the reasoning is obvious. As The Economist puts it, the West’s war on drugs has lasted 100 years, and completely failed. Can’t we try something else? The hard part would be convincing unreasonable people – like Limbaugh Republicans who get extremely bent out of shape over cigarette smoking bans (it’s a free country!), yet rally around felony charges for the possession of minor quantities of marijuana.

Does this make sense? No.

It’ll be awhile before the topic of drug legalization is anything but political suicide in the U.S.

The gun debate is kind of insane, and I can argue both sides of it, depending on context. What I could never get particularly excited about, however, were bans on semi-automatic assault weapons or other large-caliber, high-capacity, war-like contraptions. Only rarely are they used to commit crimes (handguns are much more dangerous), and mostly they’re the provenance of hobbyists. Assault weapons bans don’t do much good for anyone. They only fan the culture wars.

However, with the drug war going on in Mexico (a real war! with hand grenades and everything!), it’s time to revisit assault weapons regulation. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the Mexican bad guys get their guns in the U.S. – high-caliber guns like AK-47s – and traffic them across the boarder. It’s easy to acquire the weapons because U.S. gun regulations are so lax (this type of firearm is illegal in Mexico).

When weapons like AR-15s, Kalashnikov rifles, and machine pistols bought easily in the U.S. become tools of criminality in our neighboring countries, it’s time to regulate the hell out of them, and fast. I know Americans don’t generally give a shit about how their actions affect the rest of the world, so to put it in terms they can understand: It’s only a matter of time before these Mexican gangs start staging shootouts in Tempe, Arizona, and by then we’ll be wishing we disarmed them when we had the chance.

I wouldn’t venture to take a stab at what, exactly, the new gun regulations should be. Of course, no regulation is perfect, and the criminals will find ways around them. But we’ve got to start somewhere, and before it’s too late.

The New York Times reports today that Wall Street firms paid something like $18.4 billion in bonuses this year, “the sixth largest haul on record.” That, despite one of the worst financial crises in history. We care about this because a lot of those bonuses were probably paid with your tax dollars (thanks, TARP!).

Wall Street says, hey! We’re playing fair! Bonuses are down 44% from last year! They also argue that they have to pay their people obscene amounts of money to keep them from defecting to other firms (as if this were a great time to switch jobs).

But this pay structure is clearly insane. The average Wall Street bonus this year – average – was $112,000. That’s in addition to salary and stock options. These are not doctors who study for 12 years, or astronauts, or scientists who are inventing shiny new things that make life easier. They are (many of them) 27-year-old kids from Long Island with Master’s degrees in economics or finance, whose job is to use other people’s money to buy things at one price and sell them at a slightly higher price.

While these middlemen (and women!) are necessary for the gears of capitalism to turn smoothly, I’m skeptical that their relatively small contribution to society is worth so much compensation. In fact, in my experience, whenever disproportionate compensation is offered in exchange for fairly basic tasks, it ends up selecting for the clever, daring, and unscrupulous among us, who are willing to do things like clear-cut rain forests, counterfeit Rolexes, and build sub-prime mortgage-backed securities shell games.

Clearly, the system has failed, and the libertarian “I leave you alone, you leave me alone” ethos didn’t work: We left them alone, and they leveraged the hell out of everything and drove the market off a cliff. Massively disproportionate compensation structures played a part, and now we’re all suffering (and paying) because of it.

Maybe it’s time to get out the tar and feathers and cap some bonuses.

UPDATE: Oh hey, look at that.