Door to Door Gun Seizure Program in DC

DC police will be going door to door in DC neighborhoods in search of guns and drugs. Similar programs are already underway in Boston, with other cities considering similar measures as well.

Under the program, police will knock on doors and ask to search your home for guns and drugs. Homeowners consenting to search will be asked to sign a release form, and granted amnesty should any guns or drugs be found on their property.

However, a couple of paragraphs after the Mayor guarantees amnesty, he goes back on his word. The program will test seized guns to determine whether or not they have been used in a crime and, if the test are positive, investigations will be launched. The investigations could lead to charges. Welcome to amnesty, DC style.

While the program sounds like a great idea to help rid the city of its crime problem, my opinion is this measure will only increase crime levels in the city. Law-abiding homeowners who have their guns seized will be left without any protection against criminals in their neighborhoods. The practice of disarming private citizens, through amnesty programs or otherwise, always results in higher crime rates.

The classic argument in favor of private citizens' right to own firearms goes something like this:

Gun control laws, by definition, are designed to eliminate (or control) the presence of firearms in a community. When passed in to law, law-abiding citizens are forced to give up their firearms or face criminal charges for possessing them. Criminals, on the other hand, do not obey laws, so there's no reason to believe they will obey gun control laws. Therefore, gun control laws will only disarm honest people, and leave them at the mercy of criminals with guns, leading to more crime. Under this program, honest citizens will be easy prey for criminals with guns.

Put yourself in the mind of a criminal for a second. Are you more likely to attack a house where you know the owner has a gun, or are uncertain if the owner has a gun? Or are you more likely to attack a house where the owner has no gun? The answer is obvious. The DC amnesty program will serve as an advertisement for criminals to invade private residences by guaranteeing them the absence of resistance from the homeowner.

Further, it's no coincidence that the first neighborhoods police will target are the same ones that have the highest crime levels. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that those same neighborhoods are the ones that receive the least amount of police protection. Remember, police aren't as concerned about protecting the public as they are concerned about protecting themselves...that's why they stay out of bad neighborhoods. Removing firearms from citizens in high crime areas will accelerate the crime rate even faster than in other parts of the city.

Finally, this program will guarantee that the only people carrying guns in the city are government-funded police and criminals. Given the recent surge in cases with alleged police brutality, the line between criminal and government-funded thug is becoming increasingly difficult to define...and programs like this will only underscore that difficulty.

Police Feedback

A small, privately held company in the Los Angeles area had its website taken down by the authorities yesterday because police feared it placed them "in danger."

The website, ratemycop.com, contained the names and badge numbers of police officers of local, state, and federal police agencies. Visitors to the site would "rate" the performance of a particular police officer and supply feedback via the website. All information provided was public knowledge, and no personal information (i.e. address, phone numbers, etc.) of the police officers was allowed.

The website served as a "customer service" guide for individuals who had had run-ins with the law. Depending on your experiences with area law enforcement, you were free to either rant or rave about the police officer's performance. Now the website is defunct, and why should we be surprised?

Heroic websites, such as The Consumerist and GetHuman, serve as invaluable tools for educating shoppers about the products they buy, often times before they buy them. GetHuman.com is a website dedicated wholly towards, well, getting a human on the phone when you call a company's customer service department. Who wouldn't use that website when faced with the daunting task of calling Comcast, for example? There are scores of stories on Consumerist about improperly stocked stores, bad customer service, etc. as well as praise for stores providing good experiences. You'd be foolish to not check out that site before supporting a particular store, right?

The point is, these websites (consumerist and gethuman being only two examples) not only help consumers, but they also help vendors better serve their customers. Why, then, the exception to the transparency rule when it comes to police officers?

Police officers are, by definition, public servants. Their job is to protect and serve, not to hide behind a veil of secrecy because they feel threatened by a particular website. If the owner/CEO of Target, for example, felt threatened by the Consumerist, would he or she have the right to petition the Internet police to remove the site? I think not. So why should the special privilege be granted to the police?

A common fallacy regarding the police is that the police need special privileges in order to fulfill their obligation to protect you and me. This idea is demonstrably false if you believe that no group--including police--should be granted special rights by virtue of being a member of that particular group. In other words, a police officer has no more rights by virtue of being a cop than I do as an individual. To assign rights to people based on which group(s) they belong to is an old collectivist principle that has its roots in refusing to view each person as an individual. Such belief systems, often formed under the guise of fighting racism, sexism, etc. achieve precisely the opposite of their stated goals by creating an environment of confusing entitlements and special privilege. Equality and freedom are instead achieved through the defense of individual liberty.

I applaud the creator of ratemycop.com for his or her innovative approach to better inform everyone of the performance of police officers in communities across the United States. If my above logic fails to convince you that the police's reasoning is flawed regarding their support for the removal of the site, perhaps it would be better for me to fight fire with fire and steal a page from today's "accepted" police logic: if the police have nothing to hide regarding their performance, why are they scared?

The Spitzer Saga and Natural Law

Brace yourself. For the foreseeable future the talking heads will be mounting their high horses daily, rallying themselves around the faults that have recently come to light regarding the Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer.

Already the puns are starting to roll in. Clever talking heads are playing bumper music on the radio like "love potion number 9" (in reference to Spitzer's client number at the Emperor's club, a high-dollar prostitution ring) or inserting crank callers in their lineups posing as prisoners, counting down the days until Spitzer heads to prison, assuring everyone that ol' Eliot will be "very popular" amongst the boys in prison. I'm still waiting for the usual journalistic layups like "Spitzer was caught in a compromising position!" or "he pulled out money to buy sex!" All that's missing in these exchanges is the awkward high-five between talking head and producer. See? I made a pun! And they say I'm not clever...

The old adage is true: sex sells. And nothing sells better than a political sex scandal, especially one involving high-dollar prostitutes. In fact, this scandal may have enough firepower to finally get Greta Van Sustern to finally stop talking about Natalie Holloway. I'd bet the over on that one, but only if pictures of "Kristen," the high-priced, 105 lb. brunette prostitute are released.

And how do I know "Kristen" is a 105 lb. brunette? It's on the front page of CNN. The political sex scandal reporting template may be well-worn, but it works every time. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during Spitzer's press conference yesterday. If I were to guess what it looked like, I'd say the press consisted of approximately 70% males, all older, "experienced" reporters, determined to draw out every nugget of juicy information possible. And by juicy, I mean the details surrounding the sexual encounter, not the reporters getting their 5 W's. The sexual consternation amongst the reporters was probably so prevalent you could have cut it with a knife. Although I'm sure the questions (if Spitzer fielded any, that is) were professional in nature, the reports they filed are anything but. We have evidence of that, right on the front page of CNN.

But what's really at stake here? Surely fewer and fewer people are surprised at the prospect of irresponsible media reporting, but what's the deeper message that is buried between the bylines? The Governor's record notwithstanding (try to ignore personal bias against the man), let's examine the rest of the report and see if we can learn anything from the reasons given for Spitzer's name appearing in a federal affidavit.

First, Spitzer's name surfaced on the federal radar late last year because (from CNN):

"A large amount of money had been suspiciously transferred from one account to another. Federal law requires a banking institution to file a Suspicious Activity Report when the institution suspects a transaction is linked to a federal crime."

Annoyed yet? It gets worse. More specifically (from CNN):

"...banks are required to report to the IRS any transactions totaling $5,000 or more if the transactions "involve potential money laundering or a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act."

The way I see it, Spitzer's privacy was violated the moment his bank filed the "Suspicious Activity Report" with the IRS. No mention was made as to whether or not Spitzer's bank had attempted to contact Spitzer to discuss the transfer of funds. Instead, the bank (under the Orwellian named "Bank Secrecy Act") filed the report with the federal government, initiating a federal investigation of a private citizen. The question begs to be asked: why didn't the bank, a private institution, upon suspecting suspicious activity from a client (private citizen), either contact the client about the transfer or, if necessary, terminate services to the client altogether?

The subtle message here is that the line between the federal government and private institutions is becoming more difficult to define. Why is the federal government snooping around, requiring private institutions to report information about private citizens to them? I have a hard enough time getting valuable information from my bank when I need it, yet when the federal government needs information on someone it can just waltz right in and seize it. Where's the sense in that?

The second concern I have with this situation stems from my belief that private citizens have lost the right to freely exchange goods and services with one another. Yes, sex is a good, and it should be allowed to be freely exchanged on the market the way every other good is exchanged, without government interference. In this instance, "Kristen" supplied a service to Spitzer at a mutually agreed upon price. Neither party was coerced into the agreement, so what's the problem? As the comic George Carlin once mused, "selling is legal, fucking is legal, so why isn't selling fucking legal?" Indeed, George, indeed.

Now, you may morally disagree with Spitzer's decision to engage in sexual activity with a prostitute on account that he is married and has three children, but that doesn't change the argument that the government has no business in preventing the free exchange of goods and services on the open market. Nor does it change the fact that a private sexual act, between two consenting adults, has no business being illegal. If you subscribe, as I do, to the theory of natural law, you understand what I'm saying. Natural law goes hand in hand with libertarianism, and the law states that man should be free to do what he wants with his life and his property, so long as he does not initiate aggression against another human being or that person's property. To author legislation on perceived moral deficiencies in society is to engage in endless demonization of individuals for victimless infractions. The Puritans tried this during their infamous witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts...and we all know how well that turned out.

The beauty of Natural Law is that it will apply to all people, in all places, at any time throughout history. In other words, despite what you know or have read about Spitzer, the law still applies to him. The larger story, and the one that is guaranteed to be ignored in favor of details surrounding the "illegal" sex act, is how far the federal government is allowed to reach--unchecked--in to your personal life. In Spitzer's case, the federal government was in his wallet and his bedroom, without Spitzer's approval. I don't know about you, but I think the federal government already spends way too much time in my wallet extracting taxes...and I really don't want them in my bedroom.

Michelle Obama's Career Advice

Stay out of the "money driven" private sector, she says, and instead find jobs in the public realm as teachers, nurses, and other important roles within a community. The goal of Mrs. Obama's speech was to empathize with the working poor in Ohio.

Ralph Reiland debunks Mrs. Obama's advice and suggests that she was taking a cheap political shot at two people who have worked, or are working, in the private "money grubbing" sector, Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea.

However, as Reiland demonstrates, Mrs. Obama's speech appears to be a political case of "do as I say, not as I do." Reiland exposes Mrs. Obama's "miraculous" ability to pay off college loans and saving for her children's future while working as VP of Community Affairs in a Chicago hospital in 2003-04 to be a direct consequence of the very capitalist system that Mrs. Obama despises. The curious thing about the Reiland's article is the nearly $200,000 salary boost Mrs. Obama received after her husband was elected to the US Senate.

While there is no question that every community needs teachers, nurses, and various other public officials, a common mistake is to assume that these industries can only exist when sanctioned by the State. In a completely free society, the capitalist system would ensure better services and higher quality goods to more people, and at lower prices. In a free market system, we'd have more people delivering books from more authors to more locations...and we'd laugh at a "public" servant's notion that her ability to pay for her children's future came from some "magic beans."

The Pink Elephant in the Room...

...is the looming economic crisis in America. Normally we ascribe terms such as "recession" or, in extreme cases, "depression" when the economy exhibits traits such as slow or negative growth, price increases, and a rise in unemployment rates, but to do so today would be non-PC. Instead of labeling present conditions with established terms we've taken to finding more creative ways to describe economic woes. My favorite term used to describe the present state of our economy was delivered last week. An official commented on the recent drop in home construction revenue (the lowest in 14 years), saying, "...it appears we are on the verge of a self-reinforcing downward spiral." Somewhere the politically correct crowd smiles in unison.

Last Friday President Bush acknowledged that the economy has slowed, but stopped short of using the word recession as an adjective. Instead, Bush bragged that his stimulus package would provide a needed booster shot. While that concession/explanation (and the promise of fresh cash) by Bush may pacify some of our consumer-driven citizens for another few months, the reality is that America has tried this "stimulus" approach before...with disastrous results.

Bush's tiptoeing around the issue of recession, depression, etc. should surprise no one, however. What elected official would openly admit to presiding over a slowing/failing economy? Asking Bush to admit that America is in a recession would be like asking a mother if she thinks her child is ugly. It ain't gonna happen.

If you remain unconvinced that our economy is in a recession, the fact that Dubya is beginning to speak of it should serve as the proverbial cold-bucket-of-water-over-the-head for you. After all, you don't want this guy realizing anything before you, do you?

Grandy and Andy: "DD-Sized" Radio Boobs

Like most people, my weekday mornings consist of routine: alarm goes off, light comes on, radio turned up. The first thing I hear? A shameless advertisement on DC's premiere conservative talk radio station, AM 630 WMAL, wherein they brag about bringing me "20 minutes commercial free of news, views, traffic, and weather...on the Grandy and Andy Show, AM 630, WMAL!" I like this segment best, even though the station's promise of bringing me 20 minutes of commercial free programming is a bald-faced lie. Note to program directors: "internal" commercials, such as the advertisement of upcoming shows on your station, is STILL a commercial. WMAL has a good thing going with 20 minutes of news at the top of the hour...but the little white lie about it being commercial free serves as a fly in the ointment for me.

For the next 20 minutes or so, I lie in bed listening to the show's main personalities, Andy Parks and Fred Grandy, yammer on and on about the day's important news stories. The two rarely agree on anything, except when it comes to the two things that are vitally important to conservative talk radio: bashing democrats and promoting war. Fred Grandy, a former Congressman from Iowa, is a proud Bush supporter, and makes no apologies for it. Listening to Grandy sing the praises of Dubya makes me wonder whether or not the former "Love Boat" star is still collecting lobbyist money as a Republican member of Congress.

Given the political leanings of Grandy and the unpopularity of his idol Dubya, you'd think it would be easy for WMAL to find a suitable personality to balance the show. Enter Andy Parks. If radio gods exist, Andy Parks is proof positive that they have a sense of humor. In fact, after unearthing Parks, WMAL might want to look in to hunting down Bin Laden, because whatever cave they found the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Parks in had to be more remote than the one where Bin Laden resides these days. Parks' sophomoric arguments--if they can be called that--usually consist of logical treatises such as "It's the law, Fred!" and "If the cop tells you to do something, you do it. No questions, you just do it." With such a wide spectrum of intellectual discourse represented, I'm surprised the station isn't fielding requests to expand the allotted time for the show.

That's what amazing about this show, though: somehow a die-hard Bushie sounds more reasonable than the overt militarist. Instead of following the cable news network example of off-setting a conservative guest with a liberal guest, WMAL decided to offset one simple-minded conservative with an even less sophisticated (but far more bellicose) war hawk! Listening to Grandy and Andy debate an issue is like re-watching one of the GOP Presidential debates where Mitt Romney and John McCain took turns accusing each other of not being militaristic enough. Like every media-generated difference between candidates, regardless of party, the differences between Grandy and Andy are entirely cosmetic.

Now, at this point, whenever I voice my criticism of radio personalities--and AM radio in general--someone always asks the question, "Why don't you just change the station?" You're probably thinking that right now, as a matter of fact. I'll answer that question for you: it's not that simple to just turn off the radio or change the station. I've been a steadfast talk radio junkie ever since I swore off the FM dial back in 1998, and I'm never going back. Talk radio does for me what People Magazine does for prying, irresponsible simpletons. It's junk food. Better stated, talk radio is like that annoying, itchy bug bite on the back of your knee that you know you're not supposed to scratch, but it feels oh-so-good to do so. If that makes me a masochist, then I'm happy to embrace talk radio as my torture rack.

There is no shortage of awful programming on the AM band, and the "Grandy and Andy" show is far from the bottom of the barrel. The complaints surrounding radio icons such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. are voluminous and, frankly, misguided. Most criticisms I've read regarding established radio personalities make the crucial error of ascribing to the host some form of journalistic responsibility, as if the host has some honesty requirement to fulfill when espousing his or her opinions every day. Another reason why I am able to enjoy talk radio as much as I do is because that, in the ten years I've listened to AM radio, I've never taken seriously anything a host or personality has said.

Occasionally I will shout at the radio in response to something a host says when I find the remark particularly egregious. Sometimes I catch myself getting carried away in the same way I used to get upset when someone denigrated my favorite coach, player, or team on sports talk radio. Other times I catch myself before the profanities start to slip. In both cases, and as it applies to the "Grandy and Andy" show, I have to remember that radio personalities are entertainers; they're disc jockeys operating on a different frequency. For some reason that knowledge has always brought a smile to my face.

Map My Run: Saturday's Test

I normally reserve my Saturday mornings for longer runs. For the past three weeks I've resisted the call to go out on Friday nights in order to get a good night's sleep before pounding the pavement early on Saturday morning. So far my plan has been successful...I've gotten plenty of sleep on Friday night, run long on Saturday morning, rested all Saturday afternoon, then indulged a little (sometimes more) on Saturday nights. I've always found a certain comfort in routine when it comes to exercise, and I'm pleased with the results I've seen thus far.

This week I decided to cross the bridge and run along the Mt. Vernon trail in Virginia. The route takes you along the Potomac River, and the terrain is generally flat. By the time you reach the five mile mark you're alongside Washington National Airport, and the view is spectacular. On this particular morning, the planes were taking off in my direction, so I was able to see about five large jets come right off the runway towards me.

The weather was the biggest obstacle to overcome this morning. DC received a lot of rain on Friday, beginning in the afternoon, and the skies looked threatening this morning while I stretched out in the parking lot. My fleeting hope of finding a two hour window where the rain wouldn't affect me were dashed before I finished my first two miles. The rain started as a mist, progressed to a drizzle, then evolved in to a full-scale downpour throughout the duration of my run. The heavy rain made my clothes feel like a suit of armor...not fun.

Despite the periods of rain the overall quality of the run was above average. My original goal was to reach Oronoco City Park in Arlington, but the signs at Oronoco Bay didn't say Oronoco Park; instead, they were labeled "Tide Lock Park." Well, at least the ones I saw were labeled that way. Anyhow, even though I had technically reached Oronoco Park, I was hell-bent on finding a sign that said Oronoco Park before turning around. Who knows, maybe it was the connection between the park name and one of Enya's best known songs that inspired me to reach the sign. (Warning! Click on the link at your own risk: getting that song out of your head is NOT easy.)

Once I reached Waterfront Park I checked the park map to find out where the hell I was. Fatigue was setting in, and I knew I had to turn around soon. A quick glance at the map was a mixed blessing--although I had exceeded my original turn-around goal by over a half mile my brain was telling me the return trip would prove more difficult than anticipated. Whatever brain, I thought, what's one more mile?

Thankfully, the running gods were kind to me today because the return trip was relatively smooth. In fact, up until the final two miles or so (around the Lincoln Memorial), I felt great. I suspect my fatigue was due more to not eating or drinking anything during the run than it was to my exceeding my original distance goal. Apparently I've stumbled across the energy ceiling one can expect to derive from two slices of banana bread, a bagel with cream cheese, and one GU lemon sublime gel. How's THAT for science?

The final stat line: a little over 19 miles in about 2 hours, 15 minutes, in crappy weather. I'm exhausted, but pleased. I'd like to come in a little faster, but I have time to develop my speed. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to indulge a little...after a nap, of course.