Bowe Bergdahl: The Real Story (Interview)

I don't normally do interviews- in fact, I've only posted one interview previously. And I am normally skeptical of the "confidential source" interview, especially when the "confidential source" is claiming to 'blow the lid off' of some conspiracy theory.

However, this is not a conspiracy theory. While I realize the subject matter will be unpopular with some readers, I believe this is a story which needs to be told.

This is an interview with "Mr. Smith", an active-duty U.S. Army intelligence specialist who has asked to remain anonymous. He should be known to many of my Twitter followers. His bona fides have been confirmed publicly by some "big-name" Twitter users with impressive military credentials. He brings to the topic the refreshing viewpoint of, as he puts it, a soldier who is "not an officer, who actually works in the field and doesn't do pretty slide shows". This pragmatic viewpoint is revealed by the nature of his comments: He has no problem relating the facts, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.

What follows is the interview, edited only to put it into a readable format and to protect "Mr. Smith's" identity.

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Mr. Smith: A little more of my background is needed so you know where I'm coming from.

At the time of Berghdahl's "capture" I was acting as a liaison with Afghan officers partnered with our command in Bagram.  In large part because I was awake and many Americans were not, since in my field we operate off of human time and not the time the unit typically operated on. So I had known them and we benefited from their insight. In addition to that, I was responsible for setting up oversight of an informant network to support offensive operations. 

Me: I think most readers are familiar with the official account of Bowe Bergdahl; in what way does your account differ from the well-known account of him?

Mr. S: So on 30 June he was at his outpost, not on the main FOB itself. From what I remember what was passed to us was he was a part of a platoon at the OP working with Afghan National Security Forces (Police or Army)

The bottom line was he was not well respected among his unit. I have a friend now who basically says "what round [indicating he'd like to shoot him] for desertion". And that's basically what it was. I'm sure you've heard of the story that he wasn't captured but pretty much went with the Afghans right?

Me: I have heard something to that effect, yes, but I wasn't sure whether it was true or not.

Mr. S: Well go back to him not being respected. He was disgusted with his deployment which was not very exciting. He was also known to not be a very patriotic person. Not everyone in the military is, but we're also not all Bradley Manning.

If there's one thing I could say to sum up Bergdahl, it's that he is to the infantry what Bradley Manning was to the intelligence corps. Minus the homosexuality, both were sour on the US, the war, their rather ultra comfortable lifestyle growing up and were running away when they joined the Army.

Me: I see. So, for lack of a better way of expressing it, you think it was youthful discontent and bad judgment which caused him to leave, as opposed to some other motive like, for instance, being an Islamic convert?

Mr. S: Yeah, because there's the fact he was drunk as all hell that night. As far as being a convert, he wasn't very religious, by accounts of his company or his parents if you look at their side of things. Most disaffected youths aren't very religious.

Me: Do you think he would have done it sober?

Mr. S: He probably would have actually put up a fight if he was actually captured. What happened that night is what teenagers do when they want to piss off their parents after being told what not to do. He was off duty and went to drink with his Afghan buddies who he had grown closer to according to more than one report. He left a note behind and in it was his send off. So he threw a plan together at somepoint to leave. I think getting drunk might have been liquid courage. But there’s still the possibility he was just stupid and getting drunk with the wrong crowd… but again, leaving his weapon behind? Head scratcher…

Me: Do you think the reason he hasn't been repatriated is because it's known that he went willingly? As in, "why bother 'rescuing' someone who went voluntarily?".

Mr. S: I know the vast majority of people, after those first few weeks, in RC-East at that time did not want to go hunting him down because they felt he was a deserter. And frankly, I think that's why no serious effort has been made to get him since that time. Lots of questions surround his “capture” and commanders nor politicians should be willing to risk lives on a possible deserter.

Me: Are you familiar with any attempt to recover him?

Mr. S: There were several operations conducted immediately afterwards because we did not know if he was a deserter or if he was legitimately a POW. Let me share a quote from one of the people who was there:

"Solely responsible for destroying the campaign plan of a BCT and derailed two months of election prep. and that says nothing about all the other shit that got delayed by the ass hole."

One guy calls it a "walkabout" and I'd agree.

Me: How did he destroy the campaign plan? By deserting, or something else he did?

Mr. S: By deserting. We take DUSTWUNs, the code we give to missing US personnel, seriously. So basically for two months things shut down to look for Bergdahl. In the heat of fighting season we had to shift offensive operations, projects, plans, to look for a guy that may not have wanted to be sought after. 

I learned the night/morning he went missing we had a bead on him. Those Afghans I liaison with came to me with some information. We knew that day, less than 12 hours after he went missing the Haqqanis had him, and we knew exactly what they were going to use him for but there was some fear he would be publicly executed. So the military put everything into finding him.

Additionally, SPC Brandon Steffey was killed in action on 25 October 2009 on such an operation. Steffey was a Combat Tracker Dog handler who was on his way to follow an alleged trace on Bergdahl when he and his CTD (also KIA) were struck by an IED en route to the location of the trace. There are probably more but my buddy remembers this mission he and SPC Steffey were on.

Me: So, contrary to the belief by some people- the "Bring Bowe Home" people- who believe nothing was done to retrieve him, in reality thousands of troops were involved, in some way, in looking for him.

Mr. S: Troops? Whole brigades were told to cease all operations and start to immediately pound the doors from Kabul to Kandahar. Then there's the cost of the airframes. UAVs and helicopters were literally flown to the breaking point for a solid two weeks after that. Every Kiowa, Apache Longbow, and Blackhawk was broken for about a month because of that. They had to take them down to avoid serious airframe damage. We basically surged every feasible aircraft into RC-East for 2 weeks and broke a lot of them.

I personally took a tip and guided a UAV around the Afghan countryside. Nothing came up from it. But there were plenty of operations launched because there were "spottings" of him and every Afghan knew we'd pay for his return. About a week after it all happened is when we started hearing stories about his "capture". Ultimately people got tired of chasing a ghost that everyone was learning had left his weapon, his gear, body armor, and much of his supplies with the Afghans he was partying with that night. 

Now I've drank with Afghans too so I'm not going to say he's wrong for it because I’m not a hypocrite. But he was wrong for not having a gun on him, which should say a lot about the circumstances surrounding the event. Everyone always has their gun on them when you’re at an outpost like that.

Me: Do you think it's even possible to find him now, or is he lost for good?

Mr. S: We know is probably in Waziristan, Pakistan.  We kept running tabs on tips and hints at his wearable after the immediate 2 weeks. Every scent we got in my field I had to run it up to the intel chiefs and operations immediately and our teams covered that part of the border where he would of crossed at. There were very few hits on his transport. But we think he was in Pakistan within a day or two. 

Will we "find" him? Possibly if we're allowed to capture guys... but that's another story. We're not capturing anyone anymore and all missions are Afghan partnered, which means going after a missing American isn't a priority for them. Furthermore, we believe he's in Waziristan and well... Obama risked a mission to get UBL but not Bergdahl. Because the Haqqani network is good at hiding itself and they own that region of Pakistan. So getting an accurate location on him will be hard. Any chance we have of recovery of him will likely come from some exchange. That's if he's still alive after we've killed a few Haqqani leaders. They might have killed him already.

Me: As a final word: if you wanted to tell the "Bring Bowe Home" group something else, to make it easier for them to swallow (since they have a lot invested emotionally in this), what would it be?

Mr. S: I'm still an innocent until proven guilty guy. I say he needs to come home but don't welcome him home as a hero. He's not. He did absolutely nothing to deserve that title. Had he wanted to come home I think we would have seen something a lot sooner... but we haven't, have we? His only value as a prisoner is as a propaganda tool which the Taliban has made good use of, so basically he's living rent free as a prisoner.

So to make it easier on them so swallow? Yes, he should come home. Yes, our government should do more to get him home. But don't expect the story to be one you should be proud of. 

 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)             

The Shady Origins Of The Conservative Movement

I want to take you all on a trip back in time. The year is 1987, and "shall-issue concealed carry" is the law in only a few states. It was, by and large, a legislative non-starter- until Marion Hammer (later the first female President of the National Rifle Association) made Herculean efforts to get it passed in her home state of Florida. Her efforts paid off for all gun owners nationwide- the firestorm of concealed carry liberalization eventually led to the current situation today, where it is legal (in some fashion) in all 50 states, and the majority of US states have shall-issue laws.

It was a huge victory- which presented a problem for the NRA.

You see, there's a dirty secret to advocacy groups: If they win too much, they don't make as much money, since Joe Public assumes "they're doing pretty well, they don't need my twenty bucks" and fails to donate or renew his membership.

The NRA's membership rolls declined for a few years after 1987. Although the actual decline is difficult to determine, since the NRA's membership numbers have long been difficult to discern, author Emilie Raymond estimated a drop of about 700,000 members between 1989 and 1991.

The NRA needed a major loss to balance the scales.

Enter William B. Ruger- co-founder of Sturm, Ruger, & Co. (known colloquially as "Ruger Firearms"), and- ironically- advocate for banning "assault weapons".

In 1989, Ruger published a letter calling for a 15-round magazine limit "as an alternative to banning guns":

"The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining 'assault rifle' and 'semi-automatic rifles' is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could effectively implement these objectives."

Notice the line I have highlighted. The later 1994 Assault Weapons Ban used a complicated "features test" to define "assault rifle" by cosmetic features such as a carrying handle, protruding grip, forearm which surrounds the barrel, and so on.

The photo below is typical of many photos found around the internet, describing the absurdity of a "features test" for defining an assault weapon. (I got this photo here.) The rifle on top is an AR-15 (banned by the AWB); the bottom, a Ruger Mini-14 (not banned by the AWB). Both are semiautomatic .223-caliber rifles which can accept high-capacity magazines.

Ruger's company produced, among other firearms, semiautomatic .223-caliber and 7.62x39mm rifles, to compete with AR-15s, AK-47, and other such "assault rifles"- and, conveniently, the '94 AWB's "features test" banned most of these rifles- but not Ruger's rifles!

Now, I won't say Bill Ruger helped to write the AWB... but I will say that it's damned convenient that a) he called for a magazine capacity limit, which became part of the AWB; and, b) the AWB banned virtually all of his competitors- or would have, had it not been for the ingenuity of manufacturers designing gun parts to get around the AWB's limitations. Read Dean Speir's excellent, in-depth treatment of Ruger and the AWB here.

Ruger- also a long-time associate of the NRA (upon his death, for instance, he gave the NRA money and firearms for its museum, some of the exhibits being named for Ruger), had just handed the NRA the loss it needed to "balance the scales" and bring the memberships and donations back in.

The NRA had discovered a winning formula for making money: lose the war, but win some battles; look like the ever-fighting underdog, and people will donate money. While the NRA was losing the fight over federal gun laws, they were winning on a smaller scale by pushing for shall-issue concealed carry in state legislatures.

Further, if people believe their personal identity as a "true believer" is under attack from all sides- from enemies and "moderates" alike- they will donate even more money. Read NRA publications from the 1990s, and you will see this message oft-repeated. The NRA used gun issues "purity tests", for lack of a better term, to divide "true believer" gun rights advocates (of which I am one) from gun-rights "moderates".

Now let me bring you ahead in time to the current day.

The strategy of "losing the war, but winning some battles", "making your supporters feel like true believers attacked from all sides", is precisely the message of today's "conservative movement"- i.e., the Tea Party movement.

And a list of current and former board members of the NRA reveals a lot of familiar (and unfamiliar) faces in the conservative movement, including members of the American Conservative Union (ACU)'s board, an attorney for Tea Party candidates for US Senate, and on and on. Let me note that, while I am loathe to use a leftist resource like that particular website, it's about the only list of the NRA's board members available on the 'net. The NRA has, historically, avoided releasing the list of its board members. In fact, the last time it did so was at this link, which directed to a working web page as of January 2013, but which is now dead.

Let me advance a theory, which goes like this: The strategy of "making money by losing", perfected by the NRA in the 1990s, has been transplanted to national politics at large via the "conservative movement", which is managed from the top by many "old faces" in the NRA. These faces include, among others, both Grover Norquist and David Keene- prominent figures in the ACU; Cleta Mitchell, a prominent campaign finance attorney described by George Will as "... the most important Washington conservative not in public office...", who represented (among others) Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Joe Miller; and a whole host of other interesting characters.

It's a pretty disjointed bunch, too, as this article from POLITICO describes. (The photo at the top of this post is borrowed from that article.) It references the same players I've mentioned above, but wearing their ACU/CPAC 'hats' and not their NRA 'hats'.

I want you, the reader, to consider this: The weeks and months ahead will be filled- mark my words- with stories about FreedomWorks, Senate Conservatives Fund, Heritage Action, and other "Tea Party" groups and their fundraising efforts. And those stories will follow the pattern I laid out above- losing important battles while winning small battles (think, 2010 and 2012 Senate elections, which were lost due to poorly-chosen "Tea Party-backed" candidates) to give the illusion of "winning battles but losing the war", and so forth.

In fact, this story-breaking has already started. Sen. John Cornyn went on Glenn Beck's program last week, describing FreedomWorks as "an organization that, that uses Republican on Republican violence, so to speak, to raise money. That’s why they exist. They don’t exist to run against Democrats. They use it to try to divide Republicans". See also Sen. Mitch McConnell's comments about SCF, along similar lines.

Remember what I said above: The use of "purity tests" to weed out all but the "true believers" and attack "moderates" (how often have you seen the term 'RINO' thrown around recently?), a tactic used extensively by conservative groups today, was developed by the NRA in the 1990s.

And, for the record: I am a former NRA member. I support Gun Owners of America. I support the Second Amendment Foundation, which has brought gun owners their greatest legal victories, namely, the Heller and McDonald decisions before the U.S. Supreme Court; I also support Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership (even though I am not Jewish). I am not just "pro-gun", I'm so blisteringly pro-gun that I make other, lesser-involved gun owners' eyes roll. One need only read this blog to see my unwavering support for gun rights.

I am a patriot. My country is being lost to unbridled socialism. The organizations and people I have mentioned here are helping the socialists win by interfering with the one and only tool we have to beat them- the Republican party. We are losing our rights, our institutions, our businesses, and our livelihoods, and these people are perpetuating this loss- while claiming to be the only movement fighting it!- in order to line their own pockets.

Shedding light on them is, to me, "work of national importance".

I Am Not A Culture Warrior, But...

I am not a culture warrior. But if I were, I'd realize that the tactics the culture warriors have been employing are ineffective.

I'd see that TRUST is the most-essential building block of a relationship, and has been sorely lacking in relationships for a long time. We have a culture, today, full of people who are untrustworthy, and who are incapable of trusting a member of the opposite sex.

Young women have been led to believe that males all have the same character, and it's a rotten one; so, instead of evaluating a potential partner's character- since "men are all alike"- simply pick the best-looking douchebag you can get your parts on. Young women have been led to believe that good men are lame- and I'll talk more about this in a moment- so attempting to find a good man will be ultimately unfulfilling.

Young women have been taught that they are slaves to their sex organs- males are terrible creatures, and the only reason women want anything to do with them is because of the uncontrollable urge originating between their legs. Hence, a "relationship" is that state where a young woman can tolerate the man who satisfies that urge on more than a few occasions.

Young women have been taught that since men are untrustworthy and will eventually hurt them, they'd better prepare early on to hurt him back- through the family courts, through rumor mongering, and so forth- creating a state where the end of one of these sham relationships is seen as the beginning of a small war.

In essence, young women have been taught to act like perpetual victims- victims of society, victims of the male of the species, victims of their own bodies, and so forth. This, of course, serves a political end, since the progressive movement thrives on victim politics.

Young men, naturally, don't trust this creature, nor should they. Young men expect to be "victimized" by young women. They expect relationships to fail, and fail in a very nasty way; they expect to father children who will, later, be used by the young woman for her own financial gain, by exploiting him directly for money or by exploiting him through the family courts; and young men have been taught that young women "are all alike", and are all equally rotten, so just pick the best-looking bitch you can get your parts into.

Unless, of course, you're one of the young men who tries to be decent, and tries to accommodate this modern-day, fractured female of the species. Since it's impossible to be masculine around this victim of masculinity, the young man in question becomes a neutered shell of a man. He becomes "pussified", for lack of a better term. He wants a relationship, wants a family, and sees self-neutering as the only way to obtain what he wants.

TRUST is the element missing from all of this, and it is missing by design.

Consider the young woman in the photo above (photo from @DonnaBee511 on Twitter). She is a victim, but her victimizer isn't what she thinks it is. She thinks of herself as a victim of males. She has bought the lie I've described. She is, in fact, a victim of the culture of mistrust between the sexes. I pity her, because she will probably never know the wonders of a mutually-trusting relationship. When she proclaims "sometimes yes doesn't mean yes", she's really proclaiming "I don't know how to have a relationship, except by using my vagina to bargain for a temporary one".

"Sometimes yes doesn't mean yes" is a concept absolutely foreign to relationships where real, total trust is present. And this touches on another point- I feel sorry for the young men and women who will never experience the best sex a person can have, which is the sex you have with someone you trust implicitly, and who has earned that trust. Without that trust, sex is merely a game of quantity over quality; it is nothing more than "Insert Tab A Into Slot B". And it will only satisfy one's desires in the way food or drink satisfies hunger or thirst (to borrow a line from "A Stitch In Time", written by Andrew Robinson)- that is to say, only temporarily.

And for the real culture warriors, let me point something out: When progressives embarked on this culture campaign to erode trust between the sexes, they didn't invent any new tools to do it. They exploited the weaknesses in the culture which already existed. They exploited the fact that so many people were in life-long, rotten relationships because they'd decided who to marry when they were young, stupid, and horny. (We've all been young, stupid, and horny, so we can all relate to this). They exploited the rottenness of bad relationships- from which escape was exceptionally difficult- by pointing out the abuse in many of these relationships. In other words, the culture warriors' solution to this predicament is precisely what provided the progressives with the ammunition they needed. I am, of course, referring to the same culture warriors who think gay people marrying is the biggest threat to families today. Some of the best, most-trusting relationships I have seen are gay relationships, which is why I wholeheartedly support marriage equality.

If I had a teenager, I would advise them thus: Anyone who tells you sex is "no big deal" is wrong. Flatly wrong. It is something special, which is why you should only share it with someone who you trust, and who has earned that trust. And some day, you'll decide that one of those few people who is trustworthy enough to share yourself with, is the one you want to be with for life.

Of course, being my kid, they'd probably be smart enough to point out that the reason I came to this assessment is because of my extensive experience with untrustworthy people.

OK, kid, don't do what I did.

WWRD: What Would Reagan Do (About Obamacare)?

The following is expansion on a comment I made on Allan Bourdius' radio show Monday night. On the topic of Ronald Reagan's gift for communication compared to the current crop of Republican representation, I have the following thoughts, which I have previously expressed in private conversations:

If Reagan were alive today, and were a leader in Congress, here would have been his approach to Obamacare: Knowing that there aren't enough votes in Congress to repeal it, and knowing that any complicated messaging attempt or legislative maneuvering will be distorted by the mainstream media and be used to hurt the party, and knowing that all the Republican party has is a single opportunity to message on this, Reagan would have done what he was best at: Crafting and delivering a message which resonates with the public, unifies the party, and is so bulletproof and simple that it couldn't be distorted by the press.

That message would have been something like this: "If Obamacare is so wonderful, why doesn't President Obama want to live under it himself? Why don't the members of Congress want to live with it? Why have the President's backers and donors gotten waivers from it? If President Obama thinks this is good enough for you and your family, why isn't it good enough for him and his family?"

In other words, tie funding the government to the Vitter amendment- which, in reality, came too little and too late.

That message is one which every Republican could get behind- it's a unifying message.

That message resonates with the public, who hate the fact that Congress "plays by a different set of rules than you and me".

That message is so simple that it leaves no room for media spin.

And as a aside, we couldn't have known in advance that the Obamacare website would be such a failure on Day One. However, if this had been our message, we could've pointed to the Obamacare website failure and said "That's why he doesn't want it for himself!".

(By the way, Allan posted this technical analysis of the website problems, and it is well worth reading)

Obama would look like an idiot. Every subsequent failure of Obamacare- which is, by the way, designed to fail- would hurt the President's approval more and more.

And when it does ultimately fail and the Democrats propose a single-payer health care system- which is the end goal of Obamacare- they'd be made a laughing stock.

Instead, we got the "defund" attempt- which accomplished nothing- and a government shutdown which has been hung on our necks. And instead of a unifying message, we've gotten divisiveness from the orchestrators of the "defund", accusing anyone on our side who thought it was bad strategy of being a "moderate", a "squish", a "RINO", and so on.

The conservative movement would do well to stop talking about Ronald Reagan so much, and start acting like him.

One Sentence Which Would Have Changed American History For The Better

Readers of this blog are well aware of the problems which face our country, and most of these problems- out-of-control government spending, a massive welfare system, federal dominion over functions which belong rightly to the states, for example- are directly tied to one big whopper of a problem: The absurdly long, complicated, and punitive federal income tax code.

A brief history lesson: in the first decade of the 20th century, the problem arose of funding new government services which couldn't be funded by the historical (constitutional) limits of federal taxation power. It was quickly learned, for instance, that a wooden-ship navy and a domestic militia were simply insufficient to defend the United States, and a more-modern military would require substantially more funding.

The new progressive movement found an opportunity to advance its agenda- namely, the socialist agenda. Karl Marx had suggested levying a progressive income tax as a major part of the communist goal of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, by taxing according to income level and giving the money away through a welfare system.

What we got, of course, was the 16th Amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

As an aside, for those who stop reading at this point and begin chanting the FairTax mantra (link), let me point this out: The operative term isn't "income tax", it's "progressive". Had a national sales tax been adopted in 1913 instead of a national income tax, we would have a progressive sales tax today, which accomplishes the same goal by taxing consumption according to the value of the purchase. FairTax is not, by any means, a solution to this problem.

Back on point: Americans in 1913 would not, if they had known of it, accepted income taxation. What they did accept was a promise of a limited tax (another link), which most people would never pay. So, progressives played a monumental game of "Just The Tip" (yes, I mean that "Just The Tip", the game popularized on high school prom night; I use the term because I'm tired of the phrase "slippery slope"). The champions of the 16th Amendment claimed that the income tax would only be applied to the very wealthy, and the rate would never exceed 7%. Boy, did they lie their collectivist asses off.

What we have today is precisely what Marx intended from a progressive tax: Government power exercised through manipulative granting and loaning of money and tax carve-outs; a massive welfare and entitlement system made possible by massive revenues (and borrowing, but that's another story); and whole sectors of the economy which are so heavily taxed and regulated, that they cannot survive without government subsidy.

You, the reader, undoubtedly asks at this point "What one sentence would've prevented all of this?"

Here it is, in bold:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration; provided that no person or corporation shall be subject to pay a sum greater than seven per cent of his annual income in a given year.

And there it is. The addition of that single sentence- a limitation on the rate (or, a guarantee in writing of the promised rate), would have left no "wiggle room" for a massive, progressive tax. What would we have today? A 7% flat tax, with no deductions, credits, etc.; no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid (which are ostensibly funded by another income tax), and instead, private savings and investment; and no federal welfare system, since a 7% flat tax wouldn't provide enough revenues to pay for it, with welfare programs being left to the states (where they rightfully belong). And a change in the tax rate would require another Constitutional convention (good luck with that).

We'd also have less government interference in business, and more money in the pockets of taxpayers.

Oh, and by the way: Discussions about government debt, borrowing, and the Federal Reserve would be much broader and encompass more of the public than they do now. Why, you ask? Because the majority of Americans believe most of the government's revenue comes from taxation, because they don't comprehend the tax code (who does, really?), and the incomprehensibility of the tax code conceals the federal government's other revenue sources.

PS: Most of the links in this post are links to some of the previous posts I've done about FairTax, flat income tax, and the like. Read some of them!

The Story Of 'Stand Your Ground'

In the wake of the Zimmerman decision, the Obama administration- pursuing its usual strategy of race-baiting and rabble-rousing- has committed itself to a "national dialogue" on "Stand Your Ground" laws; ironically, exactly the sort of laws the President supported as a state senator in Illinois.

The claim against SYG goes something like this: a duty to retreat from a deadly confrontation deescalates deadly confrontations, which leads to fewer deaths. Personally, I wouldn't shed a tear over the deaths of violent criminals who are killed by their intended victims, but, the Obama administration does.

There is no question that the administration is pursuing an "all avenues" approach to gun control, and one of these avenues is the attempt to dismantle self-defense for individuals. This is nothing new: such attempts have been made throughout the history of our country, and have often been alarmingly successful. The most common means of accomplishing this is through the courts; prosecutorial and judicial abuse of people who lawfully use force. These abuses, cumulatively, are intended to create so much uncertainty about lawful self-defense that common citizens are afraid to defend themselves.

The mechanism used in most such cases is re-interpretation of the "duty to retreat", where such duty exists.

Background: The old common law "duty to retreat" was intended (and for centuries, it was faithfully interpreted this way) to require an individual to retreat under a very limited set of circumstances. Namely:

1) When the immediate need for deadly force became apparent (i.e. at the exact moment that the encounter turned deadly);
2) When retreat could be accomplished safely (i.e. turning to run wouldn't mean getting shot in the back);
3) When no other persons in the area would become potential victims of the aggressor.

This is a very sensible policy. It permits individuals to protect others in their vicinity, it doesn't create a dangerous requirement to retreat under all circumstances, and it doesn't require a person to exercise psychic powers to predict a future deadly encounter.

Unfortunately, this is not how "duty to retreat" is interpreted today. Today, when it is applied, it is often applied in a manner which is unthinkable to reasonable people.

The first SYG case was a U.S. Supreme Court case, Beard v. United States (1895). Beard confronted three men trespassing on his property; two of them menaced him with firearms and he responded by using the butt of his rifle to strike them. One died of the head injury Beard inflicted. Beard was denied a self-defense claim at trial, because the law in Arkansas at the time mandated a duty to retreat from all places, including one's own property. SCOTUS overturned his conviction, stating that no person could be reasonably held to a duty to retreat under his circumstances.

Consider the implication of this: Had Beard not successfully appealed his conviction, the precedent in Arkansas would've required him to a) abandon his own home, b) expose himself to being shot in the back, and c) psychically predict that his attempt to "knock out" his attacker- a relative of his wife, incidentally- would, by freak chance, kill him.

As a result of this decision, states started changing their self-defense laws to conform. The first was Virginia, in Jackson's Case (1898). This decision abolished all duty to retreat in cases where the defender was otherwise acting lawfully.

Other states, however, have not changed, and have continued to permit the persecution of law-abiding people. Although I could cite hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples, I'll use a few of the more illustrative cases.

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 State of West Virginia v. Tanya Harden (2009): During a "night of domestic terror", Harden was beaten and raped repeatedly by her husband, who also beat their son. When Harden said she was leaving the home, her husband beat her head with the buttstock of his shotgun, breaking bones in her face, and pressed the barrel of the loaded shotgun against her, telling her "nobody's leaving this place tonight". Harden, believing any attempt to leave the home would alert her husband, who would carry out his threat to shoot her, waited until he dozed off, then snatched the shotgun and killed him. The state's prosecutor argued Harden had a duty to retreat from her own home because her husband "had a legal right to be there" and that she wasn't justified in shooting because the husband was asleep and "didn't pose an imminent threat", and Harden was convicted of manslaughter in 2004. Mercifully, the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned her conviction; however, she spent more than four years in prison before this relief occurred.

Since she was denied a self-defense claim by the trial judge, her defense counsel resorted to a backup option: "Battered Spouse Syndrome". This case was the impetus for states to adopt "battered spouse" rules of evidence- as opposed to changing their self-defense laws.

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In State of Hawaii v. Van Dyke on behalf of Montez (2003), Hawaii Supreme Court reversed the manslaughter conviction of Montez, an attorney who, while visiting the area, was forced to defend himself in his temporary lodgings. His conviction was based on the trial court denying his claim of self-defense (since his home was a "temporary" one), and allowing "character assassination" evidence to be used against him, such as an expert witness who testified that Montez was "predisposed to violence" because he was intoxicated at the time. Montez died in prison while awaiting appeal; his sister, Van Dyke, continued the appeal on his behalf.

Consider that: A man who lawfully defended himself died in prison because of a judge and prosecutor with a political agenda. His sister worked after his death to clear his name.

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State of Indiana v. Richard Barnes (2011): This is a case I have covered extensively here, here, here, and the state legislature's solution here. Barnes' home was unlawfully entered by police, who subsequently arrested him for a violation of law which didn't occur. Barnes was, despite Indiana's SYG law, held to the standard of "retreating" (i.e., allowing the police to enter unlawfully) in his own home.

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Occurrences of this nature aren't the exception in states without "duty to retreat", they are the norm. They occur more rarely in states with "Stand Your Ground", as in the Indiana case above.

And for those who succumb to the race-baiting, and believe that SYG laws "allow white people to shoot black people" or some such nonsense, consider this: Minorities benefit far more often from SYG than whites. Most cases of prosecutorial and judicial abuse of this nature are inflicted on minorities, and women defending themselves from an abusive spouse or partner.

Make no mistake: The current attempt from the left to strip away Stand Your Ground has nothing to do with "safety". It has everything to do with creating in the public a greater degree of fear and uncertainty in the legal system. As the saying goes, "a right not exercised..."

"The Florida Package"- Clarifying 'New' Self-Defense Terminology

During the lengthy news coverage of the George Zimmerman case, from the initial encounter through the trial and now in trial post-mortems, a number of different terms referring to Florida's self-defense laws have been thrown around and mixed together, resulting in some degree of confusion as to the meaning of these terms. I didn't really consider this a problem, until US Attorney General Eric Holder's speech yesterday at the NAACP convention- where he called for an effort to 'combat' changes in self-defense laws, claiming these changes "cause more violence than they prevent".

Let's clarify some terminology. I will likely use this post as a reference for other posts on the subject.

First, I use term "Florida package" to refer to a set of self-defense law improvements first passed in Florida in 2006 and subsequently adopted in more than 20 other states. In most cases, these states wrote Florida's language, verbatim, into their own state law. Since it is the entire package which is under attack, or will be soon, this is an important distinction.

The package consists of the following changes:

1) "Stand Your Ground"- a provision which states that the individual has 'no duty to retreat' when confronted with a potential deadly threat. In another post, I will go into greater detail as to the need for this provision.

2) "Castle Doctrine"- every state already has (or had) a "castle doctrine" law- a provision which, at the very least, exempted a person from the duty to retreat when confronted in their home. There are two "castle doctrine" changes found in the package: 1) An extension of the doctrine to include a person's temporary lodgings, place of business, and occupied motor vehicle; and 2) a 'rebuttable presumption' that a person using deadly force in one of these places did so out of a reasonable fear of imminent danger. This is important because it adds a 'layer of protection' in the event of prosecution- the prosecutor must disprove the presumption in order to prove his case.

3) Lawsuit immunity- To prevent the defender from being sued by the aggressor or someone else on the aggressor's behalf. The worst cases of this, by the way, were cases from Florida, which is why Florida was the first to enact this.

4) Self-defense hearings- This was discussed during the Zimmerman trial, because his defense attorneys opted not to request this hearing. It also varies the most among the states which have adopted it. In basic terms, the defendant may request a hearing to have charges dropped, in the judge believes there is insufficient evidence to prove that the defendant's actions were not consistent with state self-defense laws.

Some states prohibit the arrest or detention of the accused, unless the state can establish probable cause (to a judge's satisfaction) that the accused's actions were inconsistent with state self-defense laws. This differs from the traditional procedure, where the state only has to show probable cause that the accused committed a criminal offense (easy to do, since the accused essentially admits this, claiming self-defense as a defense to the criminal charge).

One major point of contention: Zimmerman's defense counsel, and virtually all of the media coverage, have suggested that these changes to state law are 'isolated', if you will, from the rest of the self-defense law, and form a separate legal defense- i.e. "We're claiming 'self-defense', not 'Stand Your Ground'"; "We're reserving the right to invoke 'Stand Your Ground'"; "If (Zimmerman) wants to be immune from lawsuit, he'll have to have a 'Stand Your Ground' hearing", etc. I have seen nothing to suggest that this is the case; in fact, in reading these statutes, I can't see how they can be read in this fashion. Each section of the package deals with a different aspect of self-defense laws.

For example- there has been considerable commentary on the last example I gave- that Zimmerman would have to request a "Stand Your Ground" hearing in order to claim lawsuit immunity. This notion ignores the following points:

1) That hearing, as described above, is a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the defendant may be prosecuted at all;

2) The lawsuit immunity appears to be automatic- i.e. the defender is already immune from lawsuit from his aggressor, until he is convicted in criminal court (which Zimmerman was not).

Is this a case of various authorities attempting to limit the application of this package of laws, or is it legal commentators on TV succumbing to the same confusion TV watchers have?

OK, Fine, I'll Talk About Abortion; or, "The Bumper Sticker War"

I've had a rule since I started this blog: I wouldn't write about abortion. The subject is simply too much of a minefield, since very few people want to hear any discussion which doesn't involve mindless regurgitation of their sides' bumper sticker slogans. I skirted that rule on only one occasion, but I wasn't talking about abortion per se, but rather, talking about legislative language.

Well, now I'm going to cross that minefield.

I'll start with this: Abortion is a horrifying thing. Absolutely horrifying. If you've ever watched one, or know someone who works in medicine and has performed one, you know this. If you're staunchly pro-choice, you probably haven't experienced this, and you should. First-hand experience with the subject really does take the starch out of most people's "pro-choice" fervor. It changes the context of the abortion conversation from "ON DEMAND!" to "is this really necessary?".

Once upon a time, "is this really necessary?" was the context. Prior to Roe v. Wade (and the bumper stickers which followed), there was a much more sober discourse on the subject. From this more-conscientious discourse came the slogan "Safe, Legal, and Rare"- the notion that clinical abortion was preferable to back-alley abortion.

What ever happened to the "Rare" part? Our government started subsidizing abortion with taxpayer money, and abortion became free-of-charge (or nearly so) for many women. Yes, it's true, Federal law prohibits direct subsidy of abortion. But organizations like Planned Parenthood receive taxpayer money for other services, and since money is fungible, it all goes into one big pot. It should go without saying, but collecting tax money from a taxpayer who believes abortion is wrong, and using it to (indirectly) pay for abortions, is a mortal sin of government; any honest pro-choicer should recognize and respect this.

Any honest pro-lifer, on the other hand, must recognize the fact that the abortion rate will never be "zero", and has never been zero in our nation's history. Indeed, the Founding Fathers were aware of the primitively-performed abortions of their day, but didn't address them in the law (the first state ban on abortion was passed in Connecticut in 1829). A nationwide ban on abortion, in addition to being politically impossible, would also fail in its objective: the demand would still exist, and- as has happened in every developed country with an abortion ban in the modern era- would be filled by a black market, operating outside the scrutiny of government regulation. There is no better example of this than the black market in Chile, which has lined the pockets of organized crime families with obscene wealth (yes, I know, that's an odd phrase for a libertarian to use) and where, despite every effort of law enforcement and policy makers, abortion can be obtained quickly with very little risk of prosecution. Instead of the horror show of the Kermit Gosnell case being an exception, it would be the rule of abortion.

"Politics is the art of the possible", said Ben Franklin. Let's face reality: A ban on abortion isn't possible, either politically or legally. Continuing to expend manpower, money, and clout on an impossibility damages our credibility (what little we have left, at the federal level) and erodes our ability to do anything else. Those of us who are horrified by abortion should seek to do what can reasonably be done: Reduce the "need" for abortion as much as possible, thereby saving as many lives as possible, without creating the conditions for a black market and without violating Constitutional liberties.

So, I propose a new bumper sticker slogan: "Your Body, Your Choice, Your Dime".

As a matter of practicality rather than strict libertarian principle, I have no issue with subsidizing contraception if it prevents pregnancies which might be aborted. This is a critical component of the concept: If contraception is available, free or nearly free for low-income women, and they choose not to use it, then they have no moral claim to a taxpayer-subsidized abortion. They made the choice to not use the available options to prevent pregnancy. The welfare culture is a culture: It will adapt to the lack of cheap abortions by adopting contraception en masse, in the same way it adapts to changes in the rules for disbursing welfare dollars and administering programs.

Likewise, nobody has a moral claim to use another person's money for a purpose that person finds unconscionable. Since there's no way to separate tax dollars from pro-choicers from tax dollars from pro-lifers, it's wrong to subsidize abortion providers with tax money- directly or indirectly. But in order to approach this, we need an acceptable alternative. Here's my suggestion: an income tax return line, for voluntary contributions to a fund to subsidize abortion in rape and incest cases (which current federal law allows). If you, the taxpayer, want your tax dollars to fund abortions in these cases, then put your money where your mouth is. Add another line for donations to pregnancy crisis centers and adoption agencies, so the pro-lifers have a way to put their money where their mouths are, too. Personally, I'd be interested to see which fund receives more donations (I already have a guess).

I am, by the way, opposed to limiting abortion in rape and incest cases. Rape is a weapon of terrorism, class warfare, and racial warfare (see the current situation in Sweden).

And there it is- a way to drastically reduce the number of abortions performed, and save as many lives as possible, without advancing an agenda which has no hope of success, and while taking the blood out of the water on the subject and pulling together the sensible pro-lifers, the honest pro-choicers who actually believed the word "rare" in "Safe, Legal and Rare", and the people in the middle who are just tired of the abortion debate, while excluding the worst elements of both sides.

If one needs an example of this blood in the water effect, look no further than Justice Clarence Thomas' comments on the abortion debate and how it has ravaged the federal judiciary.

If we take the sensible road, the vitriolic pro-choicers- people like Wendy Davis- will, through their actions and their rhetoric, expose themselves for the lying rabble-rousers they really are. They only gain credence because our side's antics make them look reasonable by comparison.

And one other thing: For the pro-lifers who believe a total, nation-wide ban via Constitutional amendment is a good idea, let me point something out: Andrew Breitbart was right when he said "Politics is downstream of culture". Your current strategy is wholly ineffective. If ever you want to get people to listen to you, and possibly change their minds- leading to, eventually, a policy shift reflecting that changed culture- the only way to do so is to adopt a strategy of this nature.

Or, you can continue being totally ineffective, and projecting a sense of smug moral superiority, while not saving one single baby from termination.

Marriage Equality Omnibus

 

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering same-sex marriage over the course of two days: Yesterday, they considered California's Proposition 8, and today will consider the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Marriage equality is a touchy subject, in no small part because so many irrelevancies crop up in the discussion and 'muddy the waters'. I say, let's strip away the irrelevancies in order to discuss the subject plainly.

Let's eliminate one irrelevancy right away: Just because the Bible prohibits something, doesn't mean that civil government has any cause to prohibit it. The United States is a constitutional republic, not a theocracy. End of story.

That argument being unequivocal, the next absurdity which emerges from that camp is the idea that legalizing same-sex marriage must also legalize polygamy, since unfettered marital choice must allow the option of marrying multiple partners. This argument fails for one very simple reason: Gay couples are asking to be married under the same conditions as straight couples. One of those conditions is that a person cannot have more than one licensed marriage at a time. Polygamy is a red herring.

Then there's the "biological" argument: Since homosexual couples can't procreate, their marriage is invalid. Please go find a heterosexual couple without children and inform them of this, right away.

Some people argue that gay marriage is an "invented" right; since the Constitution doesn't address marriage specifically, it may be regulated at will. Sorry to burst the bubble, but the Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled against them on that count, in the most aptly-named case of all time: Loving v. Virginia. The court ruled that the right to marry is one of the numerous rights protected by the Ninth Amendment. "Gay marriage" is not a distinct right from "straight marriage"- marriage, itself, is a right, and must be freely available to all persons who may lawfully exercise it- i.e. all persons who are of the age of majority and not mentally handicapped. To argue otherwise is to argue that a liberty may be converted to a privilege, which directly violates my favorite SCOTUS ruling, Murdock v. Pennsylvania: "No state shall convert a liberty to a privilege, license it, and attach a fee".

Then comes the 'conservative' legal argument: SCOTUS considering this case is akin to the Supreme Court considering Roe v. Wade, in that advocates are asking the federal courts to overturn an action of a state democratic process. I respond with the following:

1) That is precisely the function of the U.S. Supreme Court: to overturn democratic acts which violate individual liberties. We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy.;

2) Roe was an attempt- and a miserable one at that- to resolve an irresolvable conflict between two diametrically opposed viewpoints of personal liberty. The last time such a conflict of liberties occurred, half a million Americans killed each other. I won't address either the Civil War or the abortion debate; I mention them to point out that same-sex marriage is not an irresolvable conflict of this type. Person A's exercise of religious rights is not affected in any way by Persons B and C's gay marriage, except in the one circumstance I will address below. This is an issue of equal protection, plain and simple. A minority wants to enjoy the same 'privileges and immunities' enjoyed by the majority;

3) On the subject of 'state's rights': States don't have rights! The United States is a constitutional republic, not a conglomeration of oligarchies. I am frequently astonished by how often I must remind my Republican fellows of this fact. States have powers granted to them by the public or prohibited them by the Constitution, and one of the legitimate functions of the federal judiciary is to ensure that these powers are applied consistently to all persons.

The one circumstance I referenced above, with respect to the exercise of religious liberties, is the prospect that individual gay couples or gay advocacy groups will use legal actions, or other means, to harass churches and businesses for choosing to not participate in same-sex weddings. This is not only a legitimate concern: it has already happened multiple times and it will continue to happen. For this reason, were I a legislator, I would refuse to vote for any gay marriage bill which doesn't include specific protections for those who choose not to participate. If you, the reader, support gay marriage but aren't of the same mind, then you are a hypocrite. We must preserve the rights of all individuals, including the freedom of individual conscience and the freedom of choice.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the stock-standard libertarian position that government shouldn't be in the business of licensing marriage in the first place. To this, I respond thus: I agree wholeheartedly. However, eliminating marriage licensure is simply not going to happen. Continuing to bring it up serves no purpose but to change the subject away from this debate (and attempt to capture some degree of perceived intellectual superiority in the process). We must address the facts as they currently exist.

And then there is the "compromise" position: Recognize same-sex civil unions in all states. This sounds feasible and moderate enough, with one glaring problem: A civil union isn't a marriage! There are inequalities between marriage and civil unions- inheritance issues, immigration issues, health insurance and tax filing problems, etc. Even if these issues were all resolved perfectly, however, a civil union would still be less than a marriage. SCOTUS determined a long time ago that "separate-but-equal" was not a legitimate form of equality.

Now that we have eliminated all of these irrelevancies, I pose the following question to those readers who oppose marriage equality: Without making a biblical argument, a biological argument, side-stepping the issue with fantasy scenarios, asserting a fallacious legal argument, imposing a Jim Crow-era legal doctrine, falsely comparing gay marriage to abortion, or converting the right to marry into a privilege, I ask this: What else about gay people marrying bothers you so much that it's worth defying the Constitution (and continuing to lose popular support for the rest of the conservative agenda) in order to continue its prohibition?

Getting Back In The Swing Of Things

For the last several months, I've been absent from blogging here and at Conservative Daily News and Typical Shooter- largely due to constant moving as part of my new job.

In that time, I've been "Pulling a Romney", to coin a phrase- doing my part to fix a small, privately-owned company experiencing difficult times. It's tough work, and I've been living away from home, but it's worth it.

But I miss blogging- and it's time to get back into it.

Like alot of you, I was disheartened by the election. The loss seemed to be so total and caught us by surprise. We thought we were guaranteed a win.

We were wrong.

And now it's time to get back into the fight.

To this end, I'm going to CPAC. I went last year, and it was a terrific time. This year, I'm going in order to reinvigorate myself. I need a transfusion.

Then... we go to war. Come join me.