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Gun Control Stupidities
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Gun Control Stupidities
By Sheriff Michael E. Cook
Published 08. 14. 02 at 7:12 Sierra Time
xxx
As you may or may not know, on weekends I work in a gun store, in sales. This past Saturday I was selling a revolver to a nice-looking older gentleman who wanted a small .38 caliber for protection. He asked me why he had to do so much paperwork and go through all the background check stuff to buy a gun. He indicated it was easier to be born, or to buy a car or a house, than to buy a gun.
Now mind you, I spent many years in law enforcement. I think I'm a good judge of people, and to me this man looked and acted like one of our "solid citizens" as we call them in law enforcement. The instant check came back with "Proceed" about as fast as any I have ever done. However, I explained to him about the laws that have been passed, and why we were forced to do all the mandatory paper work, and even take his thumb prints.
He then commented that if he were to go down the street to an auto dealership and and buy a big motor home, a truck, or a car, the chance that he would hurt or kill someone with one of those would be far greater than with the small handgun he had just purchased. However, he would not have to be checked to buy a vehicle.
When you stop and think about it, he is quite right. We allow a 16-year-old to drive a vehicle on our highways, but we do not allow them to buy a handgun. Instead, we allow them into the driver's seat of a 3,000 pound bullet that can be aimed with great accuracy at a velocity of 60 to 100 miles per hour. Now that is blunt trauma.
I keep harping about how stupid the form is for buying a firearm. The form asks for a bunch of information and of course everyone answers all the questions just the way they should. Then, when the phone call is made, more information is taken, and if the person checks out, the green light to "proceed with sale" is given. The process also costs the buyer an extra sales tax in Oregon of $10.00 for a handgun and $9.00 for a long gun. Oregon, the state with no sales tax? I don't think so.
Many would say all this keeps guns out of the hands of criminals. Well, to that I say, "Bunk!" Show me one criminal who wants to use a gun but doesn't have one. Show me one crime that has been prevented by this law. I can tell you that almost every search warrant we ever executed on a felon (or anyone else who shouldn't have a firearm by law and was prevented by law from having one in possession) turned up a firearm anyway. So what good is this stupid law and its instant check system? The process only harasses the honest citizen who is exercising his or her right to own and possess a firearm. When do we put a stop to this stupidity, and get back to allowing people the freedom the Constitution gives them?
The anti-gun crowed wants to outlaw all firearms. To them I say: "How dumb can you get?" Narcotics are outlawed in America right now; notice how many people still buy, sell, and use them each and every day? Firearms would be the same way. It would be as bad as, or worse than, Prohibition, when alcohol was outlawed in America. Where there is demand, someone will supply it; and people who would otherwise be honest and productive citizens will become criminals. I can tell you right up front: we can't build enough jails fast enough to hold them all, nor can we afford the cost. If gun prohibition happens it would be the fall of America as a free nation. You can take that to the bank.
God Bless America.
Michael E. Cook, Coos County Sheriff, Retired.
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/08/14/sheriff.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Sheriff Michael E. Cook
Published 08. 14. 02 at 7:12 Sierra Time
xxx
As you may or may not know, on weekends I work in a gun store, in sales. This past Saturday I was selling a revolver to a nice-looking older gentleman who wanted a small .38 caliber for protection. He asked me why he had to do so much paperwork and go through all the background check stuff to buy a gun. He indicated it was easier to be born, or to buy a car or a house, than to buy a gun.
Now mind you, I spent many years in law enforcement. I think I'm a good judge of people, and to me this man looked and acted like one of our "solid citizens" as we call them in law enforcement. The instant check came back with "Proceed" about as fast as any I have ever done. However, I explained to him about the laws that have been passed, and why we were forced to do all the mandatory paper work, and even take his thumb prints.
He then commented that if he were to go down the street to an auto dealership and and buy a big motor home, a truck, or a car, the chance that he would hurt or kill someone with one of those would be far greater than with the small handgun he had just purchased. However, he would not have to be checked to buy a vehicle.
When you stop and think about it, he is quite right. We allow a 16-year-old to drive a vehicle on our highways, but we do not allow them to buy a handgun. Instead, we allow them into the driver's seat of a 3,000 pound bullet that can be aimed with great accuracy at a velocity of 60 to 100 miles per hour. Now that is blunt trauma.
I keep harping about how stupid the form is for buying a firearm. The form asks for a bunch of information and of course everyone answers all the questions just the way they should. Then, when the phone call is made, more information is taken, and if the person checks out, the green light to "proceed with sale" is given. The process also costs the buyer an extra sales tax in Oregon of $10.00 for a handgun and $9.00 for a long gun. Oregon, the state with no sales tax? I don't think so.
Many would say all this keeps guns out of the hands of criminals. Well, to that I say, "Bunk!" Show me one criminal who wants to use a gun but doesn't have one. Show me one crime that has been prevented by this law. I can tell you that almost every search warrant we ever executed on a felon (or anyone else who shouldn't have a firearm by law and was prevented by law from having one in possession) turned up a firearm anyway. So what good is this stupid law and its instant check system? The process only harasses the honest citizen who is exercising his or her right to own and possess a firearm. When do we put a stop to this stupidity, and get back to allowing people the freedom the Constitution gives them?
The anti-gun crowed wants to outlaw all firearms. To them I say: "How dumb can you get?" Narcotics are outlawed in America right now; notice how many people still buy, sell, and use them each and every day? Firearms would be the same way. It would be as bad as, or worse than, Prohibition, when alcohol was outlawed in America. Where there is demand, someone will supply it; and people who would otherwise be honest and productive citizens will become criminals. I can tell you right up front: we can't build enough jails fast enough to hold them all, nor can we afford the cost. If gun prohibition happens it would be the fall of America as a free nation. You can take that to the bank.
God Bless America.
Michael E. Cook, Coos County Sheriff, Retired.
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/08/14/sheriff.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
1. "Compare Seattle, Washington to Vancouver, British Columbia, two almost identical cities -- very similar size, and very similar economic breakdown in terms of the number of poor people and rich people, very similar ethnic breakdown." Actually, the ethnic breakdown is quite different, as the study to which Barnes is apparently referring (Sloan et al., 319 New Eng. J. of Med. 1256, 1257, 1260 (1988)) acknowledged but didn't stress -- Seattle is 9.5% black and 2.6% Hispanic, while Vancouver is 0.3% black and 0.5% Hispanic, and the homicide rates among whites in Seattle were almost identical to the homicide rates among whites in Vancouver (6.2/100,000 in Seattle, 6.4/100,000 in Vancouver).
2. "In Seattle, how many people die every year from guns? About 300. How many people in Vancouver, right next door, just across the border in Canada? About two." According to the Sloan study -- and if I'm mistaken and Barnes is referring to some more recent Seattle/Vancouver comparison, I'd love to hear it, but the Sloan study is the most famous one -- there are about 24 gun homicides per year in Seattle and 4 per year in Vancouver. Sloan et al. also did a study of gun suicides, 322 New Eng. J. of Med. 369 (1990), for King County and the Vancouver metropolitan area, each of which have about 2.5-3 times the populations of Seattle and Vancouver proper; they found 274 firearms suicide deaths for King County per year and 119 for the Vancouver metropolitan area. Accidental gun deaths would surely be under 10 per year in Seattle (the fatal gun accident rate for the whole country has fallen from under 7 per million in the late 1980s to about 3 per million now). You can mix and match these any way you want, and there's absolutely no way you can get a 300-to-2 ratio.
3. "The media's role is enormously important. . . . Just little things: if you're watching a TV show and a police officer stops somebody who has a gun and says, 'Do you have a license for that gun?' That shows that the writer of that script did not know that in this country you don't need a license." Well, if a police officer "stops somebody," that presumably means stops them in some public place -- police officers are rarely said to "stop somebody" when they confront the somebody in his home. In all states except Vermont, one in fact may not carry concealed unless one has a license (or, in some states, one may not carry concealed at all unless one is in a small group defined by profession or former profession, such as police officers). (In some states, one may carry unconcealed guns without a license, but I take it that this isn't what Barnes was referring to, since this is quite rare behavior.)
4. "Over 80 people are killed every day in the United States by guns. The numbers are just staggering with respect to gun violence in this country." Actually, if you check the Centers for Disease Control database (1999 data), it turns out that the number is 30 per day in homicides, 2.5 per day in accidents, 1 per day in police shootings, 1 per day in cases where the intent is undetermined, and 45 per day in suicides. Are suicides "gun violence"? I'm not sure, but I wonder whether most readers would have understood that "killed every day . . . by guns" and "gun violence" included suicides as more than half of the statistics.
5. "We also feel strongly that guns should be treated the same way other potentially dangerous products, such as automobiles, are. . . . We'll be pushing for treating guns the same way society treats automobiles; that is, licensing and registration of the gun." Actually, here's how cars are regulated, at least in my state of California: No federal licensing or registration. Any person may use a car on his own private property without any license or registration. Any adult may get a license to use a car in public places by passing a fairly simple test that virtually everyone can pass. Is HCI really asking that guns be treated "the same way"?
The funny thing is that Barnes could have made a solid argument that (1) there are indeed a lot of gun deaths, (2) guns should be more regulated, and (3) many Western countries have both fewer guns than the U.S. and a lower homicide rate. I think that on balance these points still do not support most gun control proposals, but that's a complex and interesting question.
But instead, the argument too often rests on errors, or at least on characterizations that omit some pretty material details. Too bad -- but a reminder that one shouldn't believe everything one reads, especially in the gun debates.
[Sasha Volokh, 6:11 AM]
TOWER POWER: Who you know is often just as important as who you can transform into a newt.
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
[Eugene Volokh, 5:42 PM]
NEOETYMOLOGY: Reader Matt Haws suggests that Tim Blair may have been the first to use "Fisk" as a verb meaning "a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words," in this Dec. 19, 2001 post. Haws points out that Blair had used "Fisk" to just mean "beat" before, but the Dec. 19, 2001 seems to be the first in which the modern meaning fully jelled.
If anyone can point to an earlier usage in this sense, please let me know.
[Juan Non-Volokh, 3:04 PM]
GOD, DEATH AND SCALIA: Justice Antonin Scalia's First Things essay "God's Justice and Ours" continues to provoke commentary. An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post claimed the essay presents a "radical" and "disturbing" view of the Constitution and shows "contempt for the past century" of Eight Amendment jurisprudence. I addressed some criticisms of Scalia's essay here and here. The Post editorial merits additional comment.
According to the Post, Scalia has too narrow a view of the Constitution, in part because he refuses to accept the notion that the scope of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on capital punishment "shifts with society's judgments about cruelty." Specifically, the Post characterizes Scalia's view as follows:
In his view, the Constitution "is not living but dead -- or, as I prefer to put it, enduring." It prohibits only those torturous deaths that it banned when adopted. The death penalty "was clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment was adopted (not merely for murder, by the way, but for all felonies -- including, for example, horse-thieving, as anyone can verify by watching a Western movie). And so it is clearly permitted today." Translation: Execute children for shoplifting? Fine by the Constitution.
Scalia is not endorsing the execution of minors or the use of capital punishment for crimes other than murder. Rather, he believes that the Constitution does not prohibit such policies. Whether to impose capital punishment for a given crime is a matter left to the legislature. The bottom line for Scalia is that judges should not impose their views on the death penalty from the bench.
Curiously enough, this was the Post's editorial position as recently as July 3. On that day, the Post criticized District Judge Jed Rakoff for usurping legislative authority in a decision declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. Under the headline, "Right Answer, Wrong Branch," the Post explained its position as follows
The Fifth Amendment explicitly contemplates capital punishment three separate times. One of those requirements demands that "no person . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." It's hard -- very hard -- to read this language as anything other than an implicit acknowledgment that the state can deprive a person of his life provided that it affords adequate process first. Judge Rakoff's argument that no amount of process is adequate when the proven fallibility of the justice system guarantees an irremediable injustice to a certain class of people is undoubtedly compelling. But it cannot make the plain words of the text mean something other than what they say. As fervently as we oppose the death penalty, the Fifth Amendment cannot be reasonably interpreted as banning it.
[Eugene Volokh, 2:59 PM]
"FORCED ABORTION": I generally agree with InstaPundit on most things, but I'm not sure that his "forced abortion" post is quite right.
The "forced abortion" policy, according to the article that he cites, was that emergency medical technicians would be fired if they got pregnant. This rule probably violated legal bans on pregnancy discrimination, but is it quite accurate to call it a forced abortion policy?
Imagine that lack of pregnancy was a "bona fide occupational qualification" for the job -- for instance, for the job of actress playing a slim, sexy character (the Hunter Tylo lawsuit, I thought, was silly, and I think that if Spelling had appealed he would have won on BFOQ grounds), or for that matter the job of soldier. Would we say that a "no pregnancy" policy there was a "forced abortion" policy? It would still have the effect of pressuring people who got pregnant to get an abortion -- but I think we'd say that this effect didn't make it a "forced abortion" policy, just like a policy of hiring only slim actresses wasn't a "forced liposuction" (or even "forced starvation") policy.
Now I suspect that lack of pregnancy is not a BFOQ for emergency medical technicians; so this makes the policy illegal. But it doesn't affect, I think, the "forced abortion" question. Either all these examples -- the vixen actress can't be pregnant, the soldier can't be pregnant, the EMT can't be pregnant -- are "forced abortion" policies (which I doubt), or all aren't.
[Eugene Volokh, 2:26 PM]
MORE FOR THE DATA JUNKIES: Check out this query page for the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports, or this one, or this one. Wow. I wish they had more search categories, and more finely granulated age, race, etc. subdivisions, but still -- wow. The Internet is a wonderful thing.
[Juan Non-Volokh, 2:26 PM]
WHO AM I?: Anonymous and pseudonymous blogging - there is a difference - are hot topics in the blogosphere (see, e.g., here and here). Given that I receive the occasional "Who is Juan Non-Volokh?" e-mail, and that some are critical of pseudonymous bloggers -- I thought I should address the point.
There are several reasons for my pseudonymity, but the largest is long-term job security, or lack thereof. When asked to join the Volokh Conspiracy, I decided that blogging under my given name would unnecessarily complicate my professional life. On this basis, we agreed on the pseudonym as a temporary accommodation. I have no intention to remain pseudonymous forever. Indeed, I would much rather post under my own name. I have merely decided that such a move would be imprudent at this time.
I also would remind some readers that the United States has a long, if not proud, tradition of pseudonymous political commentary. (Publius anyone?) I am under no delusions that my occasional ramblings reach such heights. I'd merely suggest that the use of a pseudonym, by itself, should not discredit the message, at least not entirely. This should be so particularly where, as here, there are several indicia of reliability. For instance, I respond to e-mails and address criticisms of my posts. More importantly, the Volokhs asked me to join the Conspiracy, and have yet to ask me to leave. That said, if some choose to discount what I post on this site because of the pseudonym, so be it. I only hope that regular visitors to this site find my contributions worthwhile, irrespective of the byline above.
P.S. For those who have asked: Yes, I am a Ramones fan.
[Eugene Volokh, 2:07 PM]
FIREARMS REGULATION SEMINAR SYLLABUS: Just finished updating the syllabus for my firearms regulation seminar class; if you're interested, you can find it here. Unfortunately, most of the sources aren't online, so you can't easily read along, but I just thought that some people might want a sense of the way this sort of class can be taught. And, hey, this is a blog, so this stuff doesn't have to actually be useful.
[Eugene Volokh, 12:15 PM]
LAWFUL COMBATANT IMMUNITY: When an enemy soldier shoots at an American soldier, he can get killed for it -- but it's not a crime, and once the enemy soldier is taken prisoner, he can't get punished for it. Huh?, you might say. Isn't he trying to kill people, and working with others who are trying to kill people, which makes him guilty of murder (if he succeeds), attempted murder, or conspiracy to commit murder? No, it turns out, because of "lawful combatant immunity," which "forbids prosecution of soldiers for their lawful belligerent acts" -- lawful, that is, under the laws of war -- "committed during the course of armed conflicts against legitimate military targets." Soldiers can generally only be tried for acts that violate the laws of war, such as unjustified attacks on civilians, espionage, or sabotage. (Treason is generally an exception to this, but the law of treason is only applicable to American citizens and residents, rather than to foreign soldiers.)
This issue came up in the Lindh case, and is dealt with at length in Part III (starting with p. 14) of the opinion filed July 11. The broad legal discussion seems to me quite sound and informative, though I'm not completely sure that it's right in the specific details (especially its finding that no Taliban soldiers were eligible for lawful combatant immunity). And it also seems to be pretty accessible to laypeople. Well worth a read, if you're closely following the legal issues surrounding the war.
[Eugene Volokh, 11:17 AM]
MORE ON "A GOOD THING": Reader Bill Kirtley points out that "a good thing" is a jocular locution among computer programmers, though it seemingly began as a joke in a history parody published in 1930. The amusement value of the term was complex, had to do with intonation, and wasn't that great to begin with; but now that I've been reminded of this, I do remember this from my computer programming days.
The problem, though, is that the joke worked largely because the locution was indeed unusual -- "it's a Good Thing" is funny (well, a little funny) precisely because it's odd to hear it said instead of "it's good." But these little jokes somehow find their way over time into serious speech, and, worse still, into writing; they lose their humorousness (such as it was) and become just more extra verbiage. Hate it when that happens.
[Eugene Volokh, 11:02 AM]
AUDEN: A serendipitous search brought me to The Wondering Minstrels site, and led me to read another beautiful work from Auden. I don't purport to make any broader point here, though it's impossible to quote this without making the obvious point: that which loses its vital spark dies, no matter its age or power. I just think it's a great poem, and want to share it:
The Fall of Rome
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
[Eugene Volokh, 7:47 AM]
THE LONG TERM: The reader who sent me the pessimistic message also closed with the following:
Even though I think your reader is overblown with some of his concerns, there is no doubt in my mind that eventually the United States will become some sort of a totalitarian dictatorship. Perhaps not a cult of personality dictatorship. But definitely totalitarian.
I don't think this will happen in my lifetime, or even the lifetime of my (purely hypothetical, at this point) children. But once the great grand-kids reach retirement age, all bets are off.
Look, I have no idea whether the reader is right. How can I? How can anyone? Damn it, Jim, I'm a law professor, not an astrologer.
Thinking in the long term is surely a good thing -- but we have to understand the limits of long-term planning. Who in 1900 could have predicted the world of 2000? Who in 1800 could have predicted the world of 1900? We have very few examples of liberal democracies going totalitarian, but to my knowledge they involve either being overrun by an external enemy or a precipitating internal crisis (such as the Great Depression in the case of Nazi Germany). Now we will surely have external threats or internal crises in coming centuries, and it might be that one of them will push us into totalitarianism. But the nature of these threats and crises is that they're not business as usual, and that their circumstances and outcomes are impossible to predict.
I hope that when I die, my children (also purely hypothetical at this point) will inherit a nation that's relatively safe, relatively free, and relatively prosperous -- and that my children's generation will have the best tools possible to ensure the same for their children. Thinking a generation or at most two ahead is probably good, though even that time frame is probably too long-term in some areas. But thinking 100 years ahead, and being pessimistic because of what one thinks will happen then, strikes me as a mistake. And if this pessimism saps our ability or willingness to plan as effectively as possible a generation ahead, then it's a costly mistake.
[Eugene Volokh, 7:46 AM]
MORE ON PESSIMISM: A reader writes -- in a message whose tone and thoughtfulness I much appreciate, though as you'll see I quite strongly disagree with it:
Your optimistic arguments are uplifting. I don't suppose you've listened to John Banzhaf on today's "Talk of the Nation?" If ever there was a cure for your optimism, here it is.
I agree with your reader, even though I think he's overblown about some things. I'm most concerned about the types of arguments that are winning now. Witness Mr. Banzhaf. The anti-tobacco and anti-fast food arguments are totalitarianism pure and simple. Mr. Banzhaf's opening rehetoric is that he'd prefer legislation, but that hasn't worked, so he'll try litigation, never, I suppose, stopping to consider the possibility that legislation hasn't worked because people basically don't agree with him.
Can there be a shred of a doubt that next lowest hanging fruit will succomb eventually? A multi-billion dollar corporation vs a 300lb 8 year old girl? Does personal choice stand a chance?
Two thoughts:
I generally strongly oppose the tobacco/gun/fast-food/alcohol/etc. tort lawsuits (the alcohol one hasn't been filed yet, but the case for such a lawsuit with regard to alcohol is surely much stronger than as to guns or fast food), but let's keep things clear: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian. The U.S. during Prohibition, the U.S. during the War on Drugs, or the U.S. with tobacco and fast food heavily regulated and litigation-taxed was/is/will be not totalitarian. Whether or not these restrictions may restrain individual liberty, be wrong, and have all sorts of bad consequences, they aren't totalitarianism.
The trial lawyers won on tobacco, but so far, they seem to be losing on guns, and I highly doubt that they'll win on fast food. Among other things, there are lots of fast-food eating jurors who don't want their Big Macs to double in price. Maybe I'm wrong on this -- but I don't think so.
[Michelle Boardman, 7:40 AM]
GOD TO COUPLE: "SEND IN THE CLONES": If you and your partner have been struggling with infertility, perhaps it is God's way of telling you to clone yourselves. In an interview with Connie Chung, a couple preparing to clone the woman explains:
KATHY: I think that God really wants us to do this, that it is the next step. I can't imagine any other reason why we haven't had a child, other than this is what we were meant to do.
First, I'm going to call all of my friends who oppose cloning on religious grounds to inform them of His Plan. Next, I'm going to call all of my gay friends in committed relationships to share the good news; they've been enlisted in God's plan to build a clone army. Won't they be pleased!
[Juan Non-Volokh, 4:42 AM]
TRUTH OR D.A.R.E.: Government anti-drug education programs, such as D.A.R.E., are notorious for hysterical claims about drug use and heavy-handed tactics. D.A.R.E. has also done very little to reduce drug use. No matter. As Dave Kopel reports, the program is expanding to target guns. In at least one jurisdiction, Rockton, Illinois, the D.A.R.E. program is recycling some of the worst anti-gun myths, and making up some new ones of its own.
Monday, August 12, 2002
[Eugene Volokh, 1:33 PM]
WHY WE DON'T BLOG MUCH ON WEEKENDS: Check out the stats for InstaPundit, who does blog on weekends. (Our own stats would be less helpful here, precisely because we don't blog much on weekends, and our readers might well know that, and stay away precisely because of our relative silence.)
[Eugene Volokh, 9:49 AM]
MORE ON OPERATION TIPS: Faced with criticism from left and right, the Justice Department is scaling back its Operation TIPS proposal for encouraging the public to pass along evidence of activity that may be related to terrorism (source: FoxNews article):
"We are not going to target any company or industry that has workers that are going inside people's homes or working around people's homes," said one Justice official, who added that the DOJ is "absolutely discouraging" tips on activities from within people's homes. . . .
"They've scaled back Operation TIPS, but it is still an effort to enlist the private sector as government sanctioned peeping Toms," [Laura W. Murphy, director for the American Civil Liberties Union] said.
Now I can certainly see how Operation TIPS and similar projects can be abused; and perhaps on balance withdrawing or scaling back TIPS is a good idea. But surely these quotes illustrate the logical weakness of the most common anti-TIPS argument.
Imagine for a moment the following conversation:
Citizen calling the FBI or the police department: "Hi -- I noticed something unusual when visiting someone's house, and while I can't be sure, I think it might be bombmaking equipment."
FBI / police operator: "Sorry, sir, but we're absolutely discouraging tips on activities within people's homes."
Citizen: "But I thought that I ought to report --"
Operator: "Which part of 'absolutely discouraging tips on activities within people's homes' didn't you understand, you snitch? Peeping Tom! You should be ashamed of yourself. "
I doubt that we really want to see conversations like that -- either about possible evidence of terrorism, or possible evidence that a neighbor is beating his wife, or sexually abusing his children. Yes, there are dangers with these sort of citizen tips; but on balance, I take it that we'd think that someone who alerts the police to what he thinks might be evidence of a crime is generally being a good citizen (especially if we agree that the possible crime really ought to be a crime). And this is so even if the evidence of wife-beating, child sexual abuse, or bombmaking was seen when the person was lawfully inside someone else's home.
Now maybe the foes of TIPS don't really want such reports to be discouraged (though that's the word that the Justice official used, and though that's implied by Murphy's condemning tipsters as "peeping Toms"), but merely not explicitly encouraged; and perhaps this might ultimately be a sensible line -- accept citizen tips, but don't officially encourage them. But if alerting the police to what you think might be evidence of crime is generally good, I'm not sure why it's bad for the government to encourage such good behavior. At the very least, this sort of "don't discourage, don't encourage" proposal would have to be defended more clearly than it has been.
(See also here, here, and here for more Volokh Conspiracy posts on this subject.)
[Eugene Volokh, 8:02 AM]
PERSECUTION: Quick summary of the University of North Carolina mandatory Islam-related-reading flap: The University of North Carolina is requiring students to read a book about Islam, which includes various excerpts from the Koran; that some students are suing, claiming that the requirement violates their religious freedom; and that the North Carolina legislature is trying to require UNC to cancel the assignment. I'm not sure who's right and who's wrong here, and I doubt that I could figure it out unless I actually read the required assignment, something that's not on the top of my to-do list.
But I am pretty sure that the legislature's proposed action, proper or not, simply can't be called "persecution," which is what the usually very sharp William Saletan calls it in Slate. UNC, an arm of the state government, decided to impose a reading requirement. The legislature, which also speaks for the state government, is thinking about removing it. It might be a waste of the legislature's time; it may be foolish for the legislature to be interfering with educational policy decisions; I express no opinion on that. But it just isn't persecution of anyone -- not of the students, not of the teachers, not of Muslims generally.
(I should mention, by the way, that I generally quite like Slate; I pick on it more than on other journals largely because I read it more than I read other journals.)
[Eugene Volokh, 4:30 AM]
"RIGHT-TO-BEAR-ARMS CROWD": There's another pretty unpleasant-sounding zero-tolerance incident in the news: A seemingly model high school student was expelled for a year for having a cooking knife in the back of his truck -- it apparently fell out when he was helping his grandmother move, but the school insists that their zero-tolerance policy mandates the expulsion; Joanne Jacobs links to a generally very good L.A. Times story about this.
I actually think the zero-tolerance policy question is more complex than many people suggest it is; zero-tolerance policies yield errors that wouldn't happen if the school administrators had more discretion, but discretionary policies yield errors that wouldn't happen if the school administrators were governed by a zero-tolerance policy. Much depends on how much you trust the administrators' discretion, and what you think are the relative risks of the two errors. It might be that zero-tolerance policies have gone too far in some places, but I'm not sure one can tell this just by looking at the widely publicized problem cases.
But that's not the focus of this post; I'll leave the zero-tolerance debate to others, such as Jacobs, who are more knowledgeable on education policy than I am. Rather, I was struck by the following quote in the L.A. Times story, which described some of the messages that the principal got after the story hit the news:
Other messages scared Short even more. The loudest voices came not from civil libertarians but from the antigovernment, right-to-bear-arms crowd. Free men are armed, slaves are disarmed. The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to bear arms . . . You're just a bunch of left-wing nazi indoctrinators . . . Take away the arms and you break a nation.
Hmm -- "right-to-bear-arms crowd." Do you suppose the L.A. Times would refer to James Madison as a "scar[y]," "antigovernment," "right-to-bear-arms crowd" guy? He did say in The Federalist that "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation" helps "form[] a barrier against the enterprises of [federal government] ambition"; "the governments [of Europe] are afraid to trust the people with arms," which keeps the European people from "be[ing] able to shake off their yokes."
What about Justice Joseph Story, the leading constitutional commentator of the first half of the 1800s, who was a supporter of a strong federal government? He too must be part of that "scar[y]," "antigovernment," "right-to-bear-arms crowd," having written that "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Not that far off from "free men are armed, slaves are disarmed" (and see the remarks of George Mason, who wrote that "to disarm the people" "was the best and most effectual way to enslave them"). Lots of other people would go into the same crowd, including, for instance, Hubert Humphrey.
But wait, there's more in that crowd: I'm not sure, for instance, whether the L.A. Times reporter knows that 44 of the 50 states have a right to bear arms provision in their state constitution; that 15 of them have been created or strengthened since 1970; or that the most recent one, the Wisconsin right to bear arms provision, which was first created in 1998, was endorsed by a 74%-26% vote. Sounds like most of Wisconsin is part of that "crowd." And this -- together with Madison, Story, and Humphrey -- should further remind us that the "right-to-bear-arms crowd" is hardly inherently "antigovernment." One can believe that a strong government, including a strong federal government, is necessary, but also recognize that such a government's power should be checked by, among other things, the citizenry being armed.
Now as it happens, I think that the arguments in the messages that the L.A. Times quotes are substantively mistaken. I don't think that the right to bear arms is particularly relevant here; that adults should have a right to bear arms in general doesn't mean that minors should have a right to possess guns or knives on school property. In my view, this case isn't about the right to bear arms but about the proper remedy for accidental violation of generally legitimate school rules.
But this itself is telling, because the reporter didn't characterize these arguments as illogical, or unsound, or inapplicable here, as he well could have. For him, such a substantive response was apparently besides the point -- after all, once one concludes that the messages are "scary" (and note that none of them contained any personal threats, which unfortunately do sometimes come from extremist right to bear arms supporters, just as they sometimes come from extremists on many political issues), and that they come from an "antigovernment, right-to-bear-arms crowd," why would there even be a need for any substantive reaction?
This sort of casual dismissal is in a way more troubling than even a direct attack. Tens of millions of people -- in fact, according to many polls, over half the population -- support the right to bear arms (though I stress again that I agree that the right is not applicable here). But I suspect that in a typical L.A. Times journalist's social circle, many fewer do, and those that do, generally keep quiet about it. These people's views and arguments thus become inaccessible, perhaps even incomprehensible, to many such journalists. Taking seriously those whose perspectives are alien to yours is hard work, and it's easy for even a good journalist to slip. And, sad to say, the result ends up being an ever-growing cultural divide between the big-city coastal media elites and the public about whom (and supposedly for whom) they write.
Sunday, August 11, 2002
[Eugene Volokh, 5:44 PM]
MORE ON ALZHEIMER'S SUFFERERS AND GUNS: My friend Jim Lindgren, a lawprof who specializes, among other things, in probate and trust law, writes:
From hearing Heston read his statement on the radio, I assume that he is now competent, whatever disagreements I might have about the wisdom of his views. He can still set up trusts or durable powers of attorney that, as a practical matter, obviate the need for being declared legally incompetent by a court or having a conservatorship. Indeed, if Heston has legal counsel, they would almost certainly urge him to take appropriate steps to remove the need for court-declared incompetence or a conservatorship -- assuming things go smoothly.
It's good to have friends who know things! As I mentioned before, the likeliest way in which an Alzheimer's sufferer might be covered under the California gun restriction is if he is placed under a court-ordered conservatorship. If Heston can avoid a conservatorship, then even if he does end up having "full-blown Alzheimer's" (a big if, and something that I'm sure all of us would wish doesn't happen), he probably won't be covered by the law.
[Eugene Volokh, 4:30 PM]
BUSH AND THE SAUDIS: InstaPundit quotes a somewhat overwrought New York Post piece by Ralph Peters slamming Bush for "groveling to Saudi bigots" and "kissing Saudi feet" in response to the Rand Corporation analyst's anti-Saudi briefing.
I know very little about the "are Saudis our friends?" controversy, and I know nothing about the Administration's true plans with regard to the Saudis. But I do know that "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a stick" (sometimes credited to Will Rogers and sometimes to Wynn Catlin). So whatever the Bush Administration foreign policy team thinks about the Saudis, I doubt that we can figure it out -- or at this point, that we should be able to figure it out -- based on the Administration's public statements on the matter.
[Eugene Volokh, 4:18 PM]
AMENDMENTS: Unfortunately, the proposed constitutional amendments that people submitted this Spring (over 100 of them) are still sitting in one of my folders; I reacted to a few shortly after I got them, but while I've read most of the others, I haven't blogged anything about them.
I do hope to get back to this in several weeks, and I feel bad that I haven't gotten to it yet, since the submitters put a good deal of thought into their proposals. But unfortunately there's been too much else happening with my day job, and I've regretfully had to put this on the back burner. My apologies, and I hope to be able to return to it soon.
http://volokh.blogspot.com/2002_08_11_volokh_archive.html#85342824
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
`Donahue' for Aug. 13
Read the complete transcript to Tuesday's show
Guests: Michael Moore, Jean Charles Brisard, Kristen Breitweiser
PHIL DONAHUE, HOST: Well, he's here. You look up style in the dictionary, there's a picture of this man, Michael Moore. Look at this. Ralph Lauren himself.
Well, Michael, only 20 - how many weeks on the best-twenty-three weeks on "New York Times" bestseller. "Stupid White Men"? Holy cow, you and Ann Coulter up there. I don't know how this happened. But a liberal is actually making a dollar and a half on his book. Congratulations. Not an easy achievement there.
MICHAEL MOORE, ANTI CORPORATE GADFLY: Thank you, Phil.
DONAHUE: And I should tell them where you are. You are in Flint, Michigan. And behind you was the Buick plant?
MOORE: That's right. This was, behind me here, the largest, longest assembly line in the world at one time. It's called the Buick City facility. Every Buick in the world back in the '50s and '60s was made here. And they shut it down a couple of years ago. And right now they're in the process of tearing it down.
And what you're looking at on the tape here-and this is the former world headquarters of Buick here in Flint. This came down just a couple of hours ago. There are signs all over the place here that say "demolition is progress." But nothing is planned to replace this facility. Twenty thousand people work here, Phil.
DONAHUE: And it's closed down and it's been razed, why, Michael?
Give us your read here. What happened to those jobs?
MOORE: Those jobs went elsewhere to places where General Motors and companies like them can exploit people with lower wages, no unions, no benefits. It wasn't because the car sales went south. The car sales have been at an all-time high. Last October, the month after 9/11, was the largest month for car sales in the history of the automobile.
And I believe last month was right up in the top five, in the history of the automobile for car sales. The cars are selling. The corporations here, especially General Motors, are making profits in the billions.
They're not tearing down this plant because people stopped buying Buicks. They're tearing it down because they found a much cheaper way to make the car, without thinking about who's going to be left to buy the cars because they no longer have jobs in places like Flint.
DONAHUE: I was not invited to Waco to the president's economic forum.
Of course, you know, the mail these days.
MOORE: You don't check your e-mail enough, Phil. That's the problem.
You have to be on-line more.
DONAHUE: Neither were you, Michael. Now, so, what do you think now? We've got Charles Schwab. We've got lots of heavyweights down there with my president in Waco-good idea?
MOORE: I've been kind of conducting my own little economic forum here in Flint today. And actually, it was very similar to Bush's in one respect. No Democrats were invited. No members of Congress.
But I actually went up to the man from the Oval Office. I didn't invite any Republicans either. I was just walking around Flint here today talking to some people. And, boy, I'll tell you, what we saw today down in Waco was not reality. This was just some kind of weird, bizarre show.
If they had TV cameras back in the days of the Roman empire, these would be the people, like, having a conference on why Rome was burning. Except these are the people that set the fire. And they're all down there at Waco discussing it.
Just-you know, I'm laughing only because I'm angry about it, actually. I think it's just-the ruse and the audacity of this, at such a time when people are struggling thoroughly to survive in this country, that they're down there. The fox is guarding the henhouse. And they're down there telling us, oh, the hens are fine. Don't worry about the eggs. Lots of productivity going on, you know.
I mean, look, the good thing, Phil, is that you and I live in a country where people are actually pretty smart. And you can't fool them.
And what went on down there today, nobody's fooled by it. Nobody is fooled
by it.
DONAHUE: You think that the stock market literally played-rolled the dice with working people's money, especially throughout the '90s. And you make the point that 401Ks really took the biggest hit here.
MOORE: Well, you did a great job when you had the people down there in Houston showing what happened there, with people that were suckered into this. I mean, I've never bought a share of stock. And most of my friends have bought stock and people I know.
And I always thought that I was kind of crazy not getting into this. But I couldn't understand if you spend money on something, aren't you supposed to get something back for it? I mean, it always looked like Las Vegas to me.
And what I feel bad about are people like here in the Flint, Michigans of this country. They invested their money in the rich man's game. It's not their game. You know, it's rigged. It's rigged to support the rich guy.
The thing that's going on with Martha Stewart, that goes on all the time. Because these people, they lunch together, they golf together. They hang out together. They share information. They know what's going on. They know where to put their money.
The average person though is suckered into this thinking, yes, I'm going to be part of the system, too. I'm going to be part of the American dream.
And I don't know how many shows, Phil, I've been on in the last decade where I've had to listen to commentators tell me, Mike, you don't get it. You know, more than half the country owns stock. Corporate America isn't just a couple of rich guys. It's owned by everybody.
Yeah, well, who's getting screwed right now? You know? The everybody, who they mean. The average working person. Not the rich guy. They're not suffering a recession. They're doing just fine.
They've got billions and billions of dollars in the bank. And they're not going to share, you know, a slice of that pie anytime soon.
DONAHUE: Yes. I don't want to run out of time. We want to bring you back for the second segment because there's lots of things.
Michael, if you hadn't supported Ralph Nader, we might have had a president in there a little closer to the people and without these Republican values that seem to suggest that all business is good, more business is better, bigger business is best.
MOORE: That was you, Phil. It was not me.
DONAHUE: My fault.
MOORE: It's all your fault.
DONAHUE: Now, what do you say? Come on, I want you to tell me what you say when they sneak up from behind and hit you with that?
MOORE: All I hear from everybody is, man, you guys were right. You know? I mean, you called it a long time ago. You said we were getting screwed, we were going to get screwed more. And it's exactly what happened.
You know, what I tell people is first of all-and I guess it just sounds like I'm beating a dead horse now, but let me just beat it one more time. Al Gore won the election. He got the most votes. He won Florida as far as most of these investigations are concerned. This election was a ripoff, most people know it.
Bush is not going to have a second term. And he's going to get his comeuppance this November. They're going to lose the House. I firmly believe that.
And it's not because the country shifted towards the Democrats. I just think that they've had it. And it's going to be the only way they're going to be able to respond, to say they don't like what's going on.
Can I just point something out, Phil?
DONAHUE: Sure.
MOORE: Just an example of what happened today. Here's a quote from Bush down at the economic conference there. He said, "The government accounting system is pretty kind of hard to explain. I've been there 18 months trying to figure it out." And then everybody laughed.
You know, that's the kind of clown we've got in the White House right now. And people see this. And they watch all of his Republican rich buddies there. All these people, like Schwab, you mentioned, who contributed $900,000 to his campaign and to the Republicans.
They're all sitting there laughing at this, while they're out here wondering, is my pension going to be there? How am I going to pay the doctors bills? Why do my kids have to work at McDonald's so we have a three-income household to pay the bills? You know, and they're sitting down there in Waco laughing at this?
I'm telling you, there's going to be hell to pay come November. And the people who are going to lose these seats are the Republicans, as a result of Bush and their policies, and this charade down in Waco today.
DONAHUE: Brother Moore, who is an author, is also, as you know, a documentarian. I'm told he got a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes- you know, where all the beautiful people hang out with that movie meeting they have every year? I mean, the guy got this special prize. A huge recognition. And the first time ever, it was awarded to a documentary.
We'll talk about that documentary. It's about Columbine, America, guns, our culture, and a bank that gives you a gun if you open an account! I wouldn't lie to you. We'll be back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, NADER CAMPAIGN RALLY, BOSTON, MA-OCTOBER 2000)
DONAHUE: He's a voice of the working man. He's Flint, Michigan's own. He's the son my mother wanted to have. His name is Michael Moore, right here!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONAHUE: Well, there we are on the campaign trail with Ralph Nader. Lots of respect for you out there, Michael. No kidding. You got the big bump from those crowds at the Garden, FleetCenter. I tell you what, you're a hit. And now Cannes-or do you say Cannes?
MOORE: I never figured that out. The French say it's somewhere in between, so I just don't ever say the word.
DONAHUE: Right. Did you wear a black tie for this?
MOORE: Yes. I came and I didn't have one on, and they wouldn't let me through. So I tried to buy one off a sound guy who was there from a TV crew. It was ugly, Phil.
DONAHUE: All right, here we go. The film that won you the award. Special prize, 55th annual Cannes festival France. All the gorgeous people there. Standing O he gets for this. This is titled "Bowling for Columbine."
The shooters at Columbine high school bowled the morning of the massacre. And this is just a scene from America, the gun culture, guns are good, everybody should have a gun. Here you are going to the bank that gives a-here it is. Watch this. He goes into a bank, wants a gun.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE")
MOORE: I'm here to open an account.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, what type of account would you like?
MOORE: I want the account where I can get the free gun.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You do a C.D. and we'll give you a gun. We have a whole brochure here you can look at. Once we do the background check and everything, it's yours to go.
MOORE: OK. All right. That's the account I'd like to open.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a vault which at all times we keep at least 500 firearms.
MOORE: Five-hundred of these you have in your vault.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In our vault.
MOORE: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have to do a background check.
MOORE: At the bank here?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At the bank. Which we are a licensed firearm dealer.
MOORE: Oh, you are. You're a bank and a licensed firearm dealer.
What do I put for race? White or Caucasian?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Caucasian.
MOORE: Caucasian. I knew you were going to make me spell that. Cau-ca-sian. Is that right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
MOORE: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think that's the part they're going to be worried about.
MOORE: "Have you been adjudicated, mentally defective, or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?" I've never been committed to a mental institution. What does that mean, have I ever been adjudicated, mentally defective?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It would be something involved with a crime.
MOORE: Oh, with a crime. Oh, OK. So if I'm just normally mentally defective, but not criminal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Exactly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go, Mike.
MOORE: OK, thank you very much. Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have one personally.
MOORE: That's a nice tension.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is. And it's a straight shooter. It' a straight shooter, let me tell you.
MOORE: Wow. Sweet. Well, here's my first question. Do you think it's a little dangerous hanging out with guns in a bank?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONAHUE: Where is that bank, Michael?
MOORE: That's right here in Michigan, Phil.
DONAHUE: A Michigan bank, huh? Boy, they must be thrilled with you.
Incidentally, somebody blamed shock rocker Marilyn Manson for the Columbine shooting. You make this point and you go to interview him. Marilyn Manson is a him. See? I'm not so old. Show them this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARILYN MANSON, SHOCK ROCKER: The two biproducts of that whole tragedy were violence in entertainment and gun control, and how perfect that that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election.
And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about-the president was shooting bombs overseas, yet I'm a bad guy because I have sang some rock and roll songs. And who is a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson? You know, I'd like to think me. But I'm going to go with the president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONAHUE: Just one more, Michael, from your documentary. Here you are talking to Marilyn Manson. Go get `em.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOORE: If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?
MANSON: I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say. And that's what no one did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONAHUE: Michael, I want to talk about this and we will, when we come back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: We're back with Michael Moore, who joins us from Flint, Michigan. If you joined us late, that pile of rubble behind him was once the longest auto assembly line in the world. I speak of the Buick assembly plant in Flint, Michigan. Tiger Woods just won the Buick Open in Michigan, and they don't make Buicks there anymore.
MOORE: And the Buick open was right here in flint. They can play golf here under Buick, but you can't get a job here for Buick.
DONAHUE: Michael, I want to talk more about some of the things you cover in your book. Airport safety. Talk about the Bic lighter.
MOORE: Actually, I'm adding a chapter to my book on my Web site. I'm covering a number of these things. And the first question I'm posing is, why is it that the Bic lighters and the matches are allowed on planes when there's that whole long list of nutty things-from toenail clippers to kniting needles to dry ice or-you know, that you can't bring on the plane. But you can bring on matches or a lighter. And you can't smoke on the plane.
So I was saying this on the book tour down in Washington, D.C. And during the signing a congressional aide comes up to me and he says, well, the Bic lighters and the matches were on the original FAA list to ban. But the tobacco companies lobbied the Bush administration to remove them from the list.
So, the priorities of this administration were quite clear to me at that point, if they weren't already.
DONAHUE: We mentioned-incidentally, what does the pilot-I heard you say this on CSPAN. What does the pilot of a commuter airline make, or start at? Say, like, American Eagle, the high wing guys?
MOORE: American Eagle, the starting pay is slightly under $17,000 a year. Starting pay for a pilot, first year. That's a pilot. They range anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 on all these commuter airlines.
The person flying you up there in the plane is actually sometimes making less than the kid at Taco Bell. You know, but that never gets discussed in terms of our safety. It's a labor issue, you know. Don't want to talk about that.
DONAHUE: You call our attention to these things as you stand before the rubble of your own hometown, once the epicenter of the automobile industry. And now, here we are trying to figure out what will happen next.
I've established that you're on "The New York Times" bestseller list. You've been there for 23 weeks. And you weren't even-we weren't-you weren't even reviewed, is that so?
MOORE: It has not been reviewed in the "Times" or in 95 percent of the papers in this country. Tonight is the very first time I've been on MSNBC in the six months that the book has been on the bestseller list.
DONAHUE: You haven't been.
MOORE: I have not been, no. It's been a virtual blackout, but it hasn't mattered.
DONAHUE: Thank goodness. You came to the right man. I'm going to-believe me, I'm going to make some people shake at this place tomorrow. I thank you, Michael. Next, the money trail...
MOORE: I'm so glad you're back on the air, Phil.
DONAHUE: ... of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: Welcome back. In his book, "Forbidden Truth"-"U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden" its subtitle-author Jean Charles Brisard makes some disturbing allegations regarding a connection between oil, Saudi Arabia, the Clinton and Bush administrations and al Qaeda.
Well, Mr. Brisard, sir, your book is the talk of Europe. It's a best-seller. Obviously, Europe has grabbed this with both hands. Not so here. We're paying-it's not that you're being ignored, but...
JEAN CHARLES BRISARD, FRENCH INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATOR: It just arrived.
DONAHUE: Huh?
BRISARD: Just arrived in the U.S.
DONAHUE: It just got here. OK. Well, we'll see what happens. In this book, you make the point that-you seem to say that all the dots connect to Saudi Arabia.
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: And those dots include George Bush, Sr.-Bush 1 - as well as al Qaeda and the United States government itself. Make your case for us here, sir.
BRISARD: I don't want to talk about politics tonight, OK? So-but the fact is, on the one hand, you have Saudi Arabia, a known-a well-known country for business with the Western countries, and is doing-this country is doing business with the United States and with others.
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: And in that part of the business, you have probably corporate interests, and probably you find in some years George Bush, Sr., and probably George Bush, the actual president. And on the other hand, Saudi Arabia is funding fundamentalism-radical fundamentalism-around the world.
DONAHUE: Yes.
BRISARD: And...
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: ... especially al Qaeda.
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: That's two different points.
DONAHUE: OK. But you are-you are suggesting that because of oil-rich Saudi Arabia and our connection to them, we were less than enthusiastic in pursuing al Qaeda before 9/11. Do I understand that?
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: The reason we didn't want to pursue al Qaeda and go after these people in Afghanistan-now, this is before 9/11, before the worst attack in our history. The reason we didn't want to do that is because it would roil Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's got to be careful. It is certainly a center of-a significant number of fundamental Islamicists live there. And we didn't want to mess up this relationship with oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Do I understand it?
BRISARD: Yes. Yes, because you cannot at the same time do business with that country, say every day it's an ally of the United States, of the Western countries generally, and at the same time point out the role of that country in the financing and the funding and sponsoring...
DONAHUE: Of terrorism.
BRISARD: ... of terrorism.
DONAHUE: But I don't see how you-you know, Saudi Arabia exiled, expelled Usama bin Laden.
BRISARD: Yes, I know. That's the official story about it.
DONAHUE: Yes.
BRISARD: Yes. "The Forbidden Truth," that's the title of our book, the truth we don't want to see.
DONAHUE: OK. You're-you're not suggesting that it was a ruse to expel him? They didn't-he scared them, didn't he?
BRISARD: Yes, because he was in Saudi Arabia. Yes, in fact. But for years after he was expelled, he was able to do business with companies in Saudi Arabia...
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: ... involving companies based in Saudi Arabia, involving individuals based in Saudi Arabia. So yes, he was expelled. That's all.
DONAHUE: Yeah. Are you suggesting that this interest in not roiling Saudi Arabia or not making trouble in this area was because we wanted to build a pipeline?
BRISARD: No. What happened is that, in fact, we wanted-everybody wanted, especially U.S. corporate oil wanted, a stable regime in Afghanistan...
DONAHUE: Stable?
BRISARD: ... a stable regime, to be able to build that pipeline, a regime that was able to control the entire Afghanistan.
DONAHUE: Right. But we wanted the pipeline, did we not?
BRISARD: Yes. Yes.
DONAHUE: And we wanted to control it.
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: And we wanted to build it.
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: And so this interest-you-here's you're suggesting, and I don't know if you're...
BRISARD: OK.
DONAHUE: You're suggesting that the Bush family, with ties to oil and Texas, had an interest in seeing that the construction of this pipeline through Afghanistan continued or moved forward, and that, you're suggesting, slowed us up and reduced our enthusiasm for going after al Qaeda and terrorism.
BRISARD: Again, I'm not going on the book about a specific link with
with...
DONAHUE: OK, but...
BRISARD: ... any of these families...
DONAHUE: You'll agree that this is a suggestion. This is an implication in your book. You may...
BRISARD: What we say in our book is that the-several big U.S. corporations, including Unocal, for instance, wanted to built that pipeline since 1996. And since that date, U.S. governments, whether under Clinton or under Bush, have helped them go through that project. That means negotiate with the Taliban. That means be accommodating with the Taliban. And it's only finally after September 11th that the U.S. government discovered the real nature of the regime.
DONAHUE: OK. I just want to just take these folks to school here. Here's Afghanistan. This is the pipeline we would like to build. This is the Caspian area, very rich oil reserves here.
BRISARD: Yeah.
DONAHUE: Lots and lots of-maybe more than anyplace else on earth. So you go through Afghanistan. No such pipeline exists now. Here are the alternatives. Go through Iran. "No," says the United States. "We don't want to go through Iran. It's too dangerous." Go through Russia? Certainly not. We want to be able to control this. Do I have it here?
BRISARD: Yes. That's it. Yes. Yes. Basically, that's it. That's the cheapest way and the shortest way to go through...
DONAHUE: But you're not here to say that it is in the-it was-it was the enthusiasm for building the pipeline that made the administration be less than aggressive in its-in its treatment of al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden before 9/11.
BRISARD: I'm speaking about the treatment of the Taliban regime. Yes, we were soft with the Taliban regime probably because of that pipeline, that big pipeline. It's an $8 billion project, so...
DONAHUE: OK.
BRISARD: ... it's important.
DONAHUE: What is the nature of the lawsuit to which you will attach your own name, as an attorney at law, that is to be filed in this country this week?
BRISARD: I'm simply part of that effort to bring to justice those who sponsored, financed or give any facility to al Qaeda and to Usama bin Laden during those years for him to be able to carry out such a tragedy as the September 11th attacks.
DONAHUE: This will be filed under the terms what we call tort law.
BRISARD: That's right. That's right.
DONAHUE: Tort law says-tort law is asbestos...
BRISARD: Yeah.
DONAHUE: ... Firestone tires-that if you're responsible...
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: ... for the injury or the death...
BRISARD: You have to pay for that. You have to pay for that.
DONAHUE: Assuming it could be proved in court that you were negligent...
BRISARD: Yes. Of course. Of course.
DONAHUE: ... and so on.
BRISARD: Of course. Of course. That's the basic principle of the lawsuit, yes. And it's done, of course, on the behalf of the families of the victims because that's the essential. I was meeting last week with a French mother who lost her son. She told me, "The only thing they recovered from my son was a bone." When you hear a mother say that, you say someone has to pay for that. Someone has to be accountable for that. And that's the purpose of the lawsuit.
DONAHUE: You must be somewhat distracted by the fact there has been no real independent investigation of all these events here...
BRISARD: The investigation, at least on the financial side, is under way, is being carried out...
DONAHUE: Yes.
BRISARD: ... to identify those individuals or entities that...
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: ... participated in the financing of al Qaeda.
BRISARD: In fact, it was-you were asked to conduct an investigation regarding the finances of Usama bin Laden.
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: So you-this is about banks and who's giving the money...
BRISARD: Yeah. Yeah.
DONAHUE: ... and how it gets in, and so on. And this, obviously, would be evidence at the trial. So?
BRISARD: Probably, yes. Yes.
DONAHUE: So in your effort, then, to trace the-to follow the money trail of al Qaeda, you came up with this. You're not saying President Bush 1, the president's father, went to-with the Carlyle group to the Middle East, or to that region, for the purpose of promoting the pipeline?
BRISARD: OK, so let's assume, if we're speaking again about Saudi Arabia, that the U.S. government, whoever it is, has probably a real problem to address the issue of the responsibility of Saudi Arabia in the tragedy of September 11th, OK, for obvious reasons-economic and strategic interests, whether personal or not. But that's precisely the purpose of the lawsuit, what the government cannot do...
DONAHUE: Right.
BRISARD: ... justice can do it.
BRISARD: But you're honest enough to tell us that, as compelling as this book is, absorbing and-you don't have a smoking gun, do you. Do you?
BRISARD: Well, the fact is, again,...
DONAHUE: This is all implication.
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: It's circumstance...
BRISARD: Yes. That has to be proven, of course.
DONAHUE: So oil interests trumped...
BRISARD: Yes. Yes.
DONAHUE: - going after the terrorists prior to 9/11.
BRISARD: That's what at least told me the former anti-terrorism director of the FBI, John O'Neill, yes.
DONAHUE: Well, let me say that...
(CROSSTALK)
BRISARD: ... don't want to-to run after the Saudis.
DONAHUE: John O'Neill, the former FBI counter-terrorist-head of counterrorism...
BRISARD: Right.
DONAHUE: ... who quit, was the security man for the World Trade Center...
BRISARD: Yes.
DONAHUE: ... when the planes hit, died in the rubble.
BRISARD: Right.
DONAHUE: How ironic is that? And you talked to him.
DONAHUE: Yes.
BRISARD: And he's the one that sent you on this trail in the first place.
BRISARD: Yeah. Right.
DONAHUE: So-wow. Well, Jean Charles Brisard, we'll watch with interest your lawsuit to be filed this week on behalf of loved ones of the victims of 9/11. And I thank you very much for sharing this intriguing story with us.
Next, a September 11th widow-not unconnected here-demands an investigation into the act of terrorism that led to her husband's death.
Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: Well, Kristen Breitweiser is one of many widows left behind after September 11th. But in the midst of her grief, she's decided to wage a battle against the United States government, demanding answers to why her husband had to die.
Thank you so much, Kristen. You know, I read the "Vanity Fair" piece which called our attention to you. You eloped, you said, with your husband, and you weren't even pregnant. Made me smile. And there are not a lot of smiles in this story. He called you from his office. What floor was he on?
KRISTEN BREITWEISER, HUSBAND KILLED ON 9/11: He was on the 94th floor. He called at 8:51 to tell me that he was OK. He said "Sweets, don't worry. I'm fine." And I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't have the television on. And he said, "You don't know?" You know, I was sitting at my desk and...
DONAHUE: Now, wait a minute. Didn't he say something about heat and...
BREITWEISER: That's what I was just going to say.
DONAHUE: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
BREITWEISER: He was sitting at his desk and had a window seat. And he said "My cheek got warm, and I looked over and there was this huge fireball" and...
DONAHUE: The other building.
BREITWEISER: Which was the other building. And he knew that I wouldn't know what building he was in. And he said, "I didn't want you to worry. I just wanted you to know that I'm OK and that it's not my building and that I love you and I just didn't want you to worry." I said, "OK," you know? He said, "Turn the television on," and I turned the TV on. And he's, like, "I have to go. We're going to go watch it on the television. Don't worry, though. I love you." And I'm, like, "OK, just be careful." And that was the last I spoke to him. And about three minutes later, I saw his building explode.
DONAHUE: So you're watching live television. You have received the call from your husband saying "Don't worry." You turn on the TV, you see the second plane hit and you know, don't you?
BREITWEISER: I knew right away. I knew approximately where his office was because he said that he was looking directly across at tower one. And I just had a feeling inside. And then when I saw the building subsequently collapse, I just said, "My God, he is gone." And I fell to the floor and...
DONAHUE: Was your 3-year-old daughter there?
BREITWEISER: And my dog and...
DONAHUE: Probably wanting to know what's going on with Mom. That's -
OK, so here you are. You know you're not alone. Nothing anybody's going to say is going to ever make you feel better. You got to hold up. You've got a daughter you got to worry about, all the rest.
But as the days go on-do I understand this, that-you know, and you start to put yourself together here, was it an anger that you felt?
BREITWEISER: I think what really initially started was I saw the picture of the president in, I think it was "Newsweek" or "Time" magazine, and I read the caption. And the caption said, you know, "Andy Card telling the president about the second plane." And then I read that he proceeded to read for 25 minutes to the 2nd-graders. He was in a Sarasota school that morning for a reading program.
And I read it again, and I thought it was, you know, misreported. And it wasn't, and I got upset. I said, you know, this nation was under attack. It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk him out of that school? He was on live local television in Florida. The terrorists, you know, had been in Florida. I mean, we find out that out now. He was less than 10 miles from an airport.
DONAHUE: Right.
BREITWEISER: And I-I am concerned. I want to know why the Secret Service did not whisk him away. I want to know why he is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes.
DONAHUE: Yeah. Well, I don't want to argue this with you at all. You know, there's lots of things that would make Americans upset, to be sure. I think the president might argue, you know, those kids were there. He's the president. If he acts like he's nervous or in a hurry-I don't know. Less forgiving-you know, I'm less generous about the issue of what happened after those planes took off. And I think you feel this way, too. Do you want to talk about that?
BREITWEISER: You know, I think...
DONAHUE: Two took off from Boston, one from Dulles.
BREITWEISER: Right. And I think that I have a lot of problems with the Pentagon. I don't understand how a plane could hit our Defense Department, which is the Pentagon, an hour after the first plane hit the first tower. I don't understand how that is possible.
I'm a reasonable person. But when you look at the fact that we spend a half trillion dollars on national defense and you're telling me that a plane is able to hit our Pentagon, our Defense Department, an hour after the first tower is hit? There are procedures and protocols in place in this nation that are to be followed when transponders are disconnected, and they were not followed on September 11th.
DONAHUE: Right. You make the case that they scrambled and escorted Payne Stewart's plane faster, you think.
BREITWEISER: Right. We use that as an example in our meetings.
DONAHUE: I've only a couple seconds here, but I want you to get this in.
BREITWEISER: OK.
DONAHUE: Go ahead. They got up there quickly with the golfer...
BREITWEISER: They got up there right away.
DONAHUE: ... who was deprived of oxygen. Everybody fell asleep on the airplane.
BREITWEISER: They got there very quickly. Moreover, the jets that were scrambled on September 11th were not only late, but they were sent from Air Force bases 200 miles away.
DONAHUE: We'll be back in just a moment with Kristen.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONAHUE: Kristen Breitweiser-there's her husband. He was killed when the second plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11th. She saw the plane hit his building after he called her. Middletown, New Jersey, Kristen.
You want an independent investigation. Now, let's make this point here. Incidentally, you came here with three other widows, didn't you? You guys must be tight.
BREITWEISER: They're my family. We are all family. And it is how we have all survived in the last year.
DONAHUE: Tell me about what your-what's-what is September 11th Advocates all about? What do you want to happen?
BREITWEISER: At this point, we are fighting for an independent investigation, an investigation into 9/11 removed from the political process. We don't feel comfortable with Congress investigating itself, basically. You have congressional committees that had oversight duties with the FBI and the CIA. We want politics removed. We want pure accountability, and we feel that an independent investigation is needed to have that.
We've had independent investigations with regard to Pearl Harbor, with regard to the shuttle accident. If there's a car accident, you have an investigation. We have waited 11 months, and I think it is deplorable that these women and myself have to leave our children, our homes, and go down to Washington and beg for answers. To have the right to have answers, we have to beg. And it's disgusting.
DONAHUE: Yeah. It's hard to believe that you had to beg. Now, you have to be well received when you go to Washington. I mean, people have got to be treating you like an egg.
BREITWEISER: I think we are well received, but I think there was a definite reticence on behalf of certain individuals that are fighting this independent investigation. And I'm sorry. There are 3,000 lives lost and three million questions remaining.
DONAHUE: Would you care to name those individuals?
BREITWEISER: No. I mean, I don't think it's too hard to say. I mean, I think that the newspapers have reported openly that the White House is against it. I understand that they're probably embarrassed. But unfortunately, my husband was murdered by Middle Eastern terrorists at his desk, and I would like some answers. You have President Bush out there saying that he wants transparency and accountability on behalf of Fortune 500 CEOs. I would like some transparency and accountability on behalf of, you know, President Bush and his workers, who were the individuals that failed my husband and the 3,000 other people that day.
DONAHUE: So you have to say, then, while you have been accorded all the courtesies we would expect to be extended to a widow, there's nothing - - you don't see anything substantial happening.
BREITWEISER: No. I think, you know, the legislation was brought to the House. It passed the House. We were very pleased with that. It's now sitting in the Senate, and the Senate needs to do its job. I am sick and tired of people not doing the right thing. I am sick and tired of having nothing being done since September 11th.
This country is not safe. I want to feel safe in this country. And I think that, to quote Edmund Burke, all that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. And at this point, the families feel that way. We feel that nothing is being done to make this country safe.
And you know, it's interesting to say, at this time of year, everyone is asking us, you know, what can we do to memorialize, what can we do to memorialize. And you know what? An independent investigation. Let's make sure our husbands, our loved ones did not die in vain. Let's make sure that all the children that will now have to grow up with this horror, this devastation in their lives will have some answers, will be able to make sense of it.
That's part of the grieving process. You need to have answers so that you can move on.
DONAHUE: So we see all this action, military go, go, go, bomb, bomb, bomb...
BREITWEISER: Right.
DONAHUE: ... bang, bang, bang. That's the whole thing. And you know, we can't be-I don't think we want to send somebody to jail for wanting to go out and find who's responsible for this. But you want an independent investigation on the events before 9/11. I understand that.
BREITWEISER: I want an independent investigation into the 24 hours of September 11th. I want to know why certain things failed. I want to know why my husband was told to return to his desk when the FAA comes out on Monday with a press conference saying that it was an excruciating 11 minutes for the controllers to think about that airliner heading dead center on my husband's building. Eleven minutes on an express elevator in tower two would have been my husband's life.
DONAHUE: Right. You hope-you prayed that your husband just vaporized without pain. But you got then a notice of-tell me that. We only have 20 seconds.
BREITWEISER: In October, I received my husband's wedding band, which I wear on my finger. And it was recovered with a part of his finger. And that's all I have, is his wedding band, which is a miracle. It was recovered from ground zero, and I recovered a part of his finger.
DONAHUE: Kristen Breitweiser, I thank you very, very much.
BREITWEISER: Thank you.
DONAHUE: Thank you.
Now it's time for Chris Matthews and "HARDBALL."
END
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