A Look Ahead At The Next Year

I was talking on Twitter with a Democrat activist the other day.

The activist and I were debating what the 2012 election would be about.

I said “unemployment”.  I mean, do you really think people think they’re better off now than they were four years ago?

The activist’s response: “Depends on who people think is at fault. Thinking on that seems to be shifting”.

Well, the media will be doing its best to “shift” that “thinking” for the part of the electorate that doesn’t pay much attention to these things.

But I think the activist was overestimating their own party.  Because I will bank on the prediction that the Democrats’ campaign will key on the folloiwng:

  • “Oh, that Hermain Cain!  He’s sure a randy one, isn’t he?  We can’t have a philanderer in the White House!”
  • Related: “A president needs to be better at covering their tracks for their transgressions than that!”
  • “We can’t have someone in the White House who gets mental blocks on tedious, repetitive questions at game shows debates, can we?  We can not have a President who makes gaffes and who doesn’t shine on TV, oh, no!”
  • “Doesn’t Mitt Romney look insincere?”
  • “Hey, don’t blame us – bailouts were all lBush’s idea!”
Anything but unemployment.

And Rahm Emanuel Is Combing Through It Looking For Tips

Nixon’s Nix long-sealed grand jury testimony in re Watergate has been un-sealed:

Here’s what we know: In June 1975, a disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon testified before a grand jury about Watergate.

What exactly he said has been sealed for the last 36 years.

That will change today when the records will be released, thanks to the efforts UW-Madison emeritus professor Stanley Kutler.

The Obama Administration is reportedly listening carefully , considering blaming the continued high unemployment rate on Nixon.

Thank You, Veterans

I’m one of the 98% that never served in the military.

And there’s really not much I can say, especially after the past ten years or so, other than “thank you”, whoever you are and where-ever and whenever you served.

UPDATE:  Veterans Day started as a memory of the carnage of “The Great War”.  2011 was, of course, the year tha last known American World War I veteran passed away.

The Real Eighties: Hold The Shamrocks

One of the glorious things about the Eighties – mostly the first half of the decade, but it reverberated through the last half as well – was the notion that almost anything went; from the last shrapnel of the punks, to the synth-pop weenies who’ go on to create “Techno”, to the infancy of hip-hop…

…to a series of reframings of traditional folk forms into something really genuinely fun and exciting.

Folk music underwent a bit of a neutered, callow revival in the nineties – but in the eighties, a slew of groups tretched the basic forms of folk music until they met rock and roll.

One of the most gloriously underrated of the entire bunch was the Irish band “In Tua Nua, a band that answers the trivia question “name a top-forty band that includes a bagpiper”…

…and the lovely Leslie Dowdall, one of the niftiest singers never to make it really really big.

In Tua Nua broke up in 1990, amid a trail of sniffing that they were “ersatz folk”…

…prompting me to give at least one unnamed “rock critics” a swirlie in the rest room of a local bar.

From Scotland – or was it Ireland?  Wales?  England?  I dunno – but I used to love the Waterboys:

And the biggest and best of all – the Pogues:

…who managed to make it almost thirty years before ending up in car ads.

Shh.  Don’t tell.  Just crank the tunes.

This idea that “anything went” was one of the things I miss about the entire decade.  For 5-10 glorious years, almost anything went.

Sort of like today, I suppose.  Today, though, “anything goes” because nothing stands in “anything’s” way.  Thirty years ago, it was pretty much an upset win.

What? You thought I was going to write about U2?

Status Quo

Nationally?  It was a long night last night – but one that proves only one thing; conservatives face a well-funded, entrenched enemy that can count on unions to turn all the money they need to run a defensive campaign, along with a media that is utterly in the bag for the left.

In Minnesota? The results of the Bloomington mayor and Saint Paul School Board races were disappointing – especially the SPPS race.  The Saint Paul Public Schools are a lost cause.  My kids have aged out of that sinking ship, which is the important part; unfortunately, my property has not.

Statewide, though?  Voters generally approved continuing existing levies, but (again, generally) rejected new taxes.  The voters apparently got the message – the Governor and the Legislature passed hundreds of millions in new K12 spending.  We’re already spending more.

Mostly, yesterday should be a wakeup call for conservatives.  Most Republican activists do it part-time, out of zeal and commitment one issue or another.  And for us, life gets in the way – kids, obligations, careers, even burnout cause the turnout to ebb and flow.  The Democrats and their supporters have people – organizers, demonstrators, researchers, even bloggers – who do all of these things full-time, for a living.

It’s going to be a busy year.  There’s no way around it; the next election is going to be for all the marbles.

I’ve Got An Idea

Let’s all us conservatives run down to the “Planned Parenthood” clinic on Ford Parkway in Saint Paul, and block the door.

And when anyone tries to come out of the building – for any reason – we’ll shove them back inside, and not let them get out.  No matter what.  Got your kids with you and need to get home?  F***  you, you’re not leaving.  Done with work at the end of the day?  F*** you, you’re not leaving.  [1].  And if the media asks us any questions, we’ll shout/chant them down, and walk away howling like testosterone-sotted dogs. And if someone gets antsy and starts shoving?  We’ll shove them back, chanting and screaming!

Would that be “non-violent?”

I mean, if  I did it, which no mainstream conservative has done, or intended to do, naturally.  Other than that?

“Occupy?”  That’s a different kettle of organic quinoa.

Megan McArdle notes:

What’s more disturbing, however, is that my reading, and private conversations, have uncovered a number of people who think this is all right–and who consider the real outrage to be the rumor (now squashed, I believe) that an old lady was knocked down by Occupy DC protesters*.

 

I am shocked that anyone would make this argument. This is outrageous. I don’t know any people on the left who would think that this behavior were “non-violent” if it were, say, aimed at abortion clinics. It’s bad enough that many of the occupiers seem to put as little thought as possible into the space they share with many fellow citizens. A sizeable number of them now seem to have decided that physical intimidation is a legitimate tactic with which to express their rage and frustration.

 

I have no doubt that support for these tactics is a minority sentiment on the left. But where are the condemnations that our left-wing commentariat were so eagerly demanding from the right a year ago every time Michelle Bachmann or another tea party figure said something stupid?

No “Tea Party” rally ever did this to anyone, ever.

Never.

Not once.  Nothing close.

“Occupy” is a movement that believes its ends justifies its means.  I don’t think we’re done with this.

[1] It’s a wonderful day for a “Goodfellas” reference.

Open Letter To Governor Dayton

To: Governor Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Bears fan
Re: Just a suggestion

Governor,

Just a quick point of order; badgering…

“It’s time for leaders of the Legislature to show some leadership to get this project approved,” Dayton said at a Capitol news conference.

…is not “leadership”.

The Democratic governor said he was prepared to unveil his stadium plan Monday but postponed his proposal last week after Republican leaders told him they opposed a special legislative session to consider a stadium bill.

Sort of like all your budget plans?

I digress:

Two rank-and-file Republican lawmakers have been drafting stadium legislation, but House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch have not proposed any ideas for funding a stadium and don’t want a special session to address the stadium issue until someone else offers a plan for them to consider.

Dayton asked of the leaders, “What are you for? What are you willing to support?”

Not sure what you think they’re supposed to do, Governor.  Drop everything to become the de-facto PR agent for a billionaire (or really a convention of billionaires) that’s trying to shake the citizens of this state down for another billion we don’t have and don’t want to spend?

Like you are?

Just saying.

That is all.

Status Report

It’s been two and a half years since the cathedra of elite Twin Citiesmainstream reporters gathered at the Humphrey Institute to giggle and fawn like a bunch of teenaged girls at a Justin Bieber autograph signing at an appearance by Seymour Hersh at the Humphrey Institute.

At that time, he said he was working on a book on how “Joint Special Operations Command” – a collection of special operations forces, “Delta” and “Seal Team Six” and other super-secret units  (and let’s note that “Delta” and “Seal Team Six” are both so secret that neither has existed under those names in over 20 years)  – that report directly to the Secretary of Defense, for hyper-secret counterterrorism missions, were “Dick Cheney’s private hit squad”.

Notwithstanding the fact that JSOF had been founded, with precisely the same mission and brief, by Jimmy Carter, whose Vice President, Walter Mondale, was sitting in the room with Hersch that night.

So why the delay on the book?

Was it because…

  • …a schlep blogger in Saint Paul pointed out that he was full of it?
  • …there really was no there, there?
  • …he now agrees with the Administration that’s using the “private hit squad?”
Just curious.

The Real Eighties: Blaze Of Glory

Punk was one of those things that made music critics tingly.  And it made people wanted to be music critics tinglier.  And among whiny adolescents and post-adolescents – like I was, in 1982 or thereabouts – that accounted for a lot of us.

At the roots of Brit punk were…

  • manic energy, and…
  • …an exaggeraged, theatrical nihilism.

And after the first wave of the punks splintered and washed away, they were replaced in Britain by a new wave of kids; they replaced the pretentious nihilism of the Sid and Nancy set with a sense of…

…purpose?  A sense of mission that veered into stridency and bombast that could get just as pretentious as the worst of Malcolm MacLaren’s arty nihilism?

Sure.  But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.

In the wake of the collapse of punk in the early eighties came a wave of musicians that were marinaded in punk rock – but also had missions.  Sometimes very different missions.  And they were British – but not English.

From Wales came The Alarm – who married manic energy and relentless hyperromanticized post-adolescent socialist “revolutionary” rhetoric into a mix that fearlessly walked the tightwire between thrilling…

…and mawkish…

…in that kind of way that still tickles that thrilled, mawkish post-adolescent thirty years later.

And from Scotland, Big Country.  They’re a one hit wonder in the US, and virtually a punch line because of it here…

…but they were a solid mid-level band for nearly 20 years in Europe.  They dialed back some of the bombast, added in some ethnic musical overtones and blazingly sharp musicianship…

…with some more oblique politics than The Alarm…

…although to be fair it’d be hard to be less oblique than The Alarm. But Big Country could turn the amps, if not the rhetoric, to 11 and let it rock too…

And from Ireland?

Well, U2 was all the above and then some.

But we’ll hit that later this week.

Top Ten Features Of The People’s Vikings

There is no issue facing this state for which Representative Phyllis Kahn (DFL, Berkeley-via-Minneapolis) can’t come up with a tortuous government intervention.

The Vikings stadium? Natch; she wants to the state to sell shares, Packers-style, to give the state and “the people” a 70% share in the team:

The community ownership idea has been floated before but Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, said Monday she would introduce legislation to require Gov. Mark Dayton and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission to work with the National Football League to make it happen. The commission owns the downtown Minneapolis Metrodome, the team’s home for nearly 30 years.

“Dayton asked for all ideas to be put on the table and that’s exactly what I’m doing here,” said Kahn. “No single idea [for funding a new stadium] has gained enough traction to pass the Legislature.”

But remember – this isn’t a 1920’s-era Wisconsin businessman proposing the idea.  It’s Phyllis Kahn, a woman for whom I’d make a joking comparison to some off-the-charts lefty whackdoodle, except that I can’t really think of anyone in Minnesota that’s farther out than her, so it just doesn’t work.

And, given that, we have to ask “what would a publicly-owned Minnesota Vikings look like under a plan involving Phyllis Kahn?

10. The Vikings would be at the Legislature begging for Local Government Aid every odd-numbered year.

9. The team would be required to participate in affirmative action to ensure they signed enough minorities.

8. The team name would need to be changed to something more reflective of Minnesota’s changing ethnography.  Something less violent.  In tune with the changing times.  Perhaps “The Minnesota Womyn”.

7. The team’s training camp would need to provide vegan options in the cafeteria.

6. The actual footballs would have to be made with no animal products.

5. NFL Players Association: Out.  SEIU: In.  (Bonus:  No need to change uniform colors).

4. The team would have to open roster spots for women, the handicapped, transgendered and non-athletic.

3. Rather than referees, each game would be decided by the crowd reaching a 90% consensus on all alleged rules violations, followed by a restorative justice process.

2. The team would be required to travel to the games via mass transit or bicycle

1. Blocking and tackling would need to be done verbally (including well-defined “safe words”) rather than via violence.

Others?

Generator Of Ex-Libertarians

I used to be a big-L Libertarian.

I left in 1998 – partly because I wanted to join a party that could both be pushed toward libertarian (with a small-l) principles and still actually exert some effect on society (by, like, winning elections and stuff)…

…and partly because the Big-L Libertarians had their feet firmly in the clouds when it came to foreign policy.  Even Thomas Jefferson, the Libertarians’ secular saint, realized toward the end of his presidency that he needed to build a Navy and Marine Corps to project power against the “Barbary Pirates”; merely defending the nation’s borders, even at a time when “missiles” flew a mile from brass cannon and threats moved around the world at the stately five-knot pace of a sailing ship, was not a tenable way to remain free.

Liberty, in short, needed defending.  And while military solutions weren’t the answer for every problem, there is a place and time for it.

I watched Ron Paul yesterday on the Sunday Morning shows in response to this news – that Iran may, again, be close to getting nukes:.

According to recent leaks, Iran has carried out experiments in the final, critical stage for developing nuclear weapons – weaponization. This includes explosions and computer simulations of explosions. The Associated Press and other media outlets have reported that satellite photos of the site reveal a bus-sized container for conducting experiments.

Parchin serves as a base for research and development of missile weaponry and explosive material. It also has hundreds of structures and a number of fortified tunnels and bunkers for carrying out explosive experiments.

Now, we’ve heard this before…:

As far back as eight years ago, U.S. intelligence sources received information indicating that the bunkers would also be suitable to develop nuclear weapons. According to that information, Iran conducted experiments there to examine its capacity to simulate a nuclear explosion.

…and while I hate to sound like one of those Bush-era yapping ninnies who claimed that President Bush was “wagging the dog”, it’s a fact that responses to foreign policy threats have been the Obama Administraiton’s only real success.

Still, whatever the current status of the Iranian nuke program is, it is a fact that they will have The Bomb eventually.

And Ron Paul’s solution – “let’s make them not think we’re jerks”, essentially – is no less dumb that that of the “nuclear freeze” ninnies in the eighties.

It’s Election Day

If you’re a conservative and live in Saint Paul, you need to get to the polls today and vote for Elizabeth Paulson, Pat Igo and Kevin Huepenbecker for School Board.  There is a crying need for common sense on the SPPS Board; we have our chance!

Also, Cynthia Schanno is running for City Council in Ward 2, against Dave Thune.  The City Council is doing a terrible job; there needs to be a change.

Finally – if you live in Bloomington, Hans Anderson is running for Mayor.  He’s a solid conservative, an engineer by training, and he can help defuse the fiscal time bomb facing that city.

Get to the polls!

They Warned Us…

…that if we voted for John McCain, our status around the world would suffer.

And they were right!.

For the Kyrgyz, the Russians are the devil they know, the Chinese are the devils flush with yuan, and the Americans, two decades after the collapse of the USSR, are the tight-fisted guys all too willing to cut a deal corrupting the previous presidential administrations of Akaev and Bakiev while delivering lectures about democracy. To quote some of the acerbic critics of former U.S. President George W. Bush, “all hat, no cattle.”

The Pentagon has lost yet another opportunity to expand its global footprint, but to use an American baseball metaphor, “three strikes and you’re out.” It’s not as if anyone except the most tone-deaf in Washington couldn’t see it coming.

Nothing’s better for a power vacuum  than letting the Chinese and Russians fill it without a serious fight.

Cambio Que Podemos Creer

Doug Ross looks at history….

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. While Great Britain’s maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world’s industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina for the position of the world’s second-most powerful economy.

…and finds some really ugly precedents.

Yes, we can.

The Real Eighties: The Filth And The Fury And The Froth

I used to think that the world was an awful place for music in the seventies – and Britain was worse than most.

Thirty-odd years later, I realize that statement was at least party something that came from the myopia that comes from being a kid and a bit of a zealot.

Still – the biggest selling British artists of the seventies were Elton John (the Bee Gees were technically Australian, and based out of the US for most of the decade).

Brits didn’t miss disco, per se – but go ahead, name a British disco group.  You thought of the Bee Gees, right?  See above.

So what does anyone remember from British rock and roll? Glam bands;if you can name one other than Queen, you’re pretty good.  Bubblepop bands like Sweet?  Down-the-middle pop like Leo Sayer?   Ponderous, dozey “heavy metal” like Black Sabbath?

Loathsome, plodding, ponderous art-rock like Emerson Lake and Palmer and (seventies-era) Genesis?  Sixties holdovers – including great ones that peaked in the decade, like Zeppelin, the Stones, the Who and the Kinks?

Punk changed that – but British punk in the seventies, looked at thirty-odd years later, was as much music made by screecny post-adolescent art-school fops, aimed at (let’s be honest) screechy adolescent art-school fops (like I more or less was, although not in the sense of actually going to art school).

But punk had a lot of fun slopover throughout Brit music in the eighties.

There was Motörhead…

…which blew away Brit metal’s seventies stodge in a booze-soaked blast of punk-influenced energy.  How big were they?  One of my enduring memories of being in Europe at the time was how much Motörhead there was, all over the place, from the UK to Germany and everywhere in between.

In fact, Brit “metal” (i use the scare quotes to ward off the inevitable argument about the history and taxonomy of metal leading up to the inevitable “________ is really hard rock, not metal”) went through a resurgence – getting energy and noise from punk, while keeping the chops.

Iron Maiden…

…and Judas Priest…

…were all “metal” (yeah, yeah, blah blah blah) that punk could listen to with a clear conscience.

And it had a much bigger effect on Brit music – much of it it in “Britain”, rather than “England”.  More on that as we continue through the week.

Reality Is Conservative

Every once in a while, when I drop some factoid or another into a “debate” with a lib, I’ll wrap it with a bit of a verbal end-zone happy dance; “Sometimes”, I’ll say, “reality is just plain conservative”.

With that in mind – the five-member Judicial Redistricting Panel has ruled on the rules to be used in redistricting

…and it’s generally good news for those who support following the rules as they’ve sprung up over the past forty years or so:

For the first time, the panel said the metropolitan area should be regarded as 11 counties, not seven. As a result more exurban counties could be tied into districts in suburban and urban areas.

That was an approach Republicans favored, said Elizabeth Brama who represents the Republican party on redistricting. She said it’s unclear what effect the change will have.

“I don’t think it’s a question of one party or the other benefiting,” Brama said. “I think it’s more a question of just fairly representing where the people in the state of Minnesota live and how they organize themselves.”

Which, to be honest, is what the GOP has been shooting for all along; as Dr. Kent Kaiser has pointed out in numerous forums, the plan passed by the Legislature – really the GOP majority – did a good job of sticking to the letter and spirit of the body of law that this state has developed in its decades of sending these questions to the courts to decide.

It was the DFL that’s gone partisan; Mark Dayton vetoed the Legislature’s plan for purely partisan grounds.  (Actually, I suspect it was less “partisan” than that the unions, Alliance for a Better Minnesota and other groups that control the DFL didn’t give him permission to pass it).  And a group of groups that, by any rational measure, call at least some of the DFL’s shots – the groups behind “Draw The Line MN” – took their shot at skewing the system to favor “communities of interest” which, inevitably, are DFL constituencies.

Now, I’m going to do just a bit of place-keeping her for future debates.  I’ll add emphasis to this next bit, from Ken Martin, former head of “Win Minnesota”, one of the groups that funneled money from unions and liberals with deep pockets into the DFL’s campaign coffers, especially for their sleazy, toxic campaign against Tom Emmer last year.  He is the current chair of the DFL.

DFL party chair Ken Martin wasn’t surprised by those changes.

I think it’s pretty pro forma and certainly establishes a lot of the same principles that were in place ten years ago,” Martin said. “Again, without discussing this further with my team and being able to look at it more in detail, I can’t comment any more than that. But on the surface I think it’s fine. I don’t think it give any party an advantage over another.”

I’m emphasizing those passages now, for later.  Because you just know that if the Judicial Panel draws the lines based on these rules, the DFL and the groups that call its shots – the public employee unions, Alliance For A Better Minnesota, the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, the League of Women Voters, Take Action Minnesota and Common Cause – will be screeching exactly the opposite, and demanding that you forget history in the bargain.

Because it’s a fairly simple thing – if you follow the rules set down in the past several court-decided apportionment decisions, the GOP should benefit; the parts of the state that support the GOP have grown, while the DFL parts have shrunk.  This represents many things – but we can not discount the fact that one of the key “communities of interest” are “people who moved to get the hell away from the cesspools the DFL has created” in the Twin Cities and Duluth.

The judical panel’s deadline to produce a redistricting map is February 21.

It’s About Results

I’ve been hearing it for over a month; “The “Occupy” Movement is going to be bigger than the Tea Party!”, and “It’s gaining1 It’s really really gaining!”.

I’ve been telling people who say that “get back to me when you’ve flipped Congress”.

But as Glenn Reynolds notes in the WashEx, we don’t have to wait for the next Congressional and Presidential elections to see what movement actually packs the electoral gear:

Though they’ve mobilized a fraction of the people who turned out for just one Tea Party rally — the 9/12 rally in Washington, which drew well into the six figures — the Occupy protests have generated far more publicity. And, at least until recently, that publicity has been mostly favorable.

But while lefty share-the-wealth demonstrations have seized the imagination of our nation’s mainstream media, they once again failed to persuade taxpayers to loosen their grips on their pocketbooks.

In the first significant tax-policy vote since the media began fawning over “Occupy”, the hippies have come up short:

In Colorado, a tax-increase effort, massively supported (to the tune of about 20 to 1 in terms of spending) by teachers unions, failed miserably. Not only did it lose by a nearly 2 to 1 margin, it failed to carry a majority even in heavily Democratic Denver. (It barely eked out a majority in Colorado’s farthest-left enclave of Boulder County.)

As Colorado talk-radio host Ross Kaminsky blogged, “The wide margin of defeat for Proposition 103 could only happen with a substantial majority — something on the order of two-thirds — of unaffiliated (independent) voters opposing the measure, something which portends well for Republican hopes in 2012 elections.”

Red state inertia?

Hardly:

This despite the fact that Colorado went for Obama in 2008.

As John Lennon might have said on The White Album’s classic “Revolution”, “If you’re gonna go hanging out in tents/you own’t affect elections now or hence…”

Guilty Until Proven Innocent. As Usual.

This blog’s first post (other than “hey, look, I have a blog!”) back in 2002 was about a firearms-related issue – the battle for concealed carry, as it happens.

And since then, it’s fair to say I’ve written a post or two about the second amendment and the civil and human right of self-defense.

But I’ve never been a “gun blogger”, like the late Joel Rosenberg or the great Clayton Cramer.  It’s one of many issues I consider vital.

But since the Evanovich shooting two weeks ago, I might forgive newcomers to my blog for thinking I am a gun-blogger.  It’s been a hot topic around here.

Not strictly on the subject of the Evanovich case – but squarely in the gun wheelhouse, and a subject on which the Evanovich case only barely avoided being germane – was this bit form the MinnPost last week, from that noted civil rights firebrand Brian Lambert.

Now, I’ve known Brian for years – indeed, on my first day at KSTP in 1985, he was filling in for Geoff Charles; Lambo is literally one of the first people I ever met in the Twin Cities media.  And he’s not a bad guy.

But I don’t think it’s unfair to say he was a leader of the “never let facts or information get in the way of giggly uninformed snark” school of reporting long before blogs and Jon Stewart made it cool.

His subject?  Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill, which was going to get a renewed push in the Legislature in the upcoming session even without the impetus of the Evanovich case; it’s a powerful swing issue among Minnesota’s mass of shooters, who have been a quietly but disproportionally powerful constituency in Minnesota for over a decade.

Remember last winter and spring’s scuffle over an expansion of the so-called “castle doctrine,” giving homeowners more legal protection in the event they needed to gun down someone on their property?

Let me guess – “gun them down” just to “watch them die?”

In the liberal subconscious, there seem to be a powerful, maybe chemical, urge to keep repeating “law-abiding gun owners are all depraved maniacs” endlessly, in the hope that it’ll ever actually be true.

Lambert cites some questions from that wellspring of care for the less-fashionalbe civil liberties – the mainstream media:

He has (second-hand) questions.  I have answers.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel throws up an editorial on precisely that legislation floating around over there in Badger Land: “Today’s quiz:

1) Just exactly what problem are lawmakers trying to solve with a proposal to extend new legal protections to people who shoot intruders in their homes, vehicles or businesses?

The problem is that in Minnesota (and Wisconsin), self-defense law is vague on what’s called the “Duty to Retreat”.  In Minnesota, the law says you have to make a “reasonable” effort to disengage from a situation in which you are being attacked and “reasonably” fear being killed or maimed.  What does “reasonable” effort mean?

It depends on where you live. A county attorney in the Red River Valley will likely see it differently than one of John Choi’s eager young DFL-bot assistants.

So, Brian Lambert – on what other civil, human right do we tolerate that level of vagueness?  Especially vagueness that is based entirely on local political fashion?  More importantly, on what other civil/human rights do you tolerate this sort of “make it up as you go along” approach to the law?

2) What is it about the current system that isn’t working?

In a nutshell:  if you, a law-abiding carry permit holder, are approached in, say, your garage or your car – which are not covered under Minnesota’s current “inside the home” exemption to the so-called “duty to retreat” – the question “did you make a reasonable effort to run away”, made in a fraction of a second in the dark under mind-warping pressure, will be answeredby some pencil-necked U of M-grad assistant County Attorney sitting in a warm office, guarded by sheriff’s deputies with metal detectors, and all the time in the world to work up whatever theory his boss wants him or her to work up.  They – in their due time – could decide you “should have” hit the gas, or run for the house, or just given the attacker what she wanted – and force you go to trial, with your freedom on the line, even if the shooting was utterly justified in every other way.

3) How many homeowners are sitting in jail because they were simply defending themselves against intruders inside their houses?

We’ll come back to that.

The answers are:

1) There is no problem.

2) The current system works just fine.

3) None.

The first two are matters of (blinkered, context-deprived) opnion.

The third is at the very best a misleading answer – and the wrong question, to boot.  Better questions would have been “how many honest, law-abiding citizens had to exhaust their lifes’ savings defending themselves against charges that revolved around prosecutors asking “did the accused try hard enough  to retreat?””.  Or “how many honest, law-abiding citizens, faced with an endless battle with a county attorney’s office that they could not afford, were hammered into taking plea bargains that destroyed their legal futures and infringed their civil liberties, in exchange for staying out of jail after shootings that were otherwise perfectly justified?”   In Minnesota, the answer to that last is “one that I can rattle off to you right now, and if you gave me a few minutes on the phone I could probably come up with half a dozen more”.

There is no need to change state law to allow for a “castle doctrine” defense (“castle doctrine” as in “your home is your castle”). Indeed, doing so could put some innocents in greater danger.

Really?

How?

I mean, the statement was made with some perception of authority; feel free, Brian, to provide an example of “danger” to “innocents” in the 31 states that have some variation of Cornish’s law on the books today.

I’ll wait.

The above answers come by the way, from Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, made up of more than 600 prosecutors, judges, criminal defense lawyers and academics. That’s a reliable set of expert witnesses.”

Well, no. It’s a set of witnesses with an agenda; leaving aside their political affiliation, “stand your ground” laws remove County Attorneys’ discretion.   Prosectors like having discretion.  Government loves having discretion.  See George Wallace.

Your expert is my “appeal to false authority”.  Not to mention…

Yeah, but tell any of ’em to just try and walk across my lawn.

…snark.  Always, always the snark.

The Media And The Evanovich Shooting: Here’s A Question For Our Media Friends

With last week’s statement by Hennco Attorney Mike Freeman that the “good samaritan” who shot Darren Evanovich acted in justifiable self-defense, I have a question for the Twin Cities media.

I’ll direct it first and foremost at my, well, good acquaintance, Bob Collins at MPR, who wrote a piece on the NewsCut blog which asked the question “A concealed carry ‘success’ or ‘failure’?” and concluded  – based on the sketchy facts and deeply incomplete and, I suggest, fatally slanted reporting the story got in the Twin Cities mainstream media – “it’s unclear whether [the Evanovich case] is a matter of the law gone right or gone wrong”.

Last week’s release from the Hennco attorney’s office answered that question.

Again.

Since 2005 – when the Minnesota Personal Protection Act was re-passed by an overwhelming bi-partisan vote – there have been exactly four shootings involving Minnesota carry permit holders (that I’m aware of – and someone will no doubt set me straight if I’m not):

  • The Evanovich case – which I’ve been writing about this past few weeks pretty extensively. Details of the shoot are here and here.  The denouement is here.
  • The Grumpy’s case, in which a bouncer was attacked by drunken, tossed-out patron with a knife; the bouncer was also never arrested,
  • The Treptow case – a deeply controversial case involving a citizen who shot (and very mildly wounded) a road-raging thug who was pointing a gun at his pregnant wife…who turned out to be an undercover cop affiliated with the disgraced Gang Strike Force.  While Treptow was never arrested, the Anoka County Attorney basically buried him in charges (the Anoka County Attorney went to a grand jury and got a three-count indictment against Treptow and another against the cop, Robbinsdale Police officer Landon Beard. The Anoka County attorney’s office then pushed the case over to Washington County, where the county attorney dropped the indictment against Beard) forcing a plea bargain leaving Treptow with a felony rap and a 60 day sentence.  The case is broadly regarded as a travesty and a miscarriage of and an example of government protecting its own. Treptow has, by the way, had his civil rights restored.
  • The Nye’s case – which involved a drunken patron shooting a bouncer at Nye’s Polonaise in Northeast Minneapolis.  The shooter wasn’t carrying his pistol – after being ejected, he went home and got it – and his permit was one of the pre-2005 variety issued largely to people with connections with the county sheriff, so it’s not really applicable to MPPA-era permit laws.

In addition to these, there have been many – according to some closely involved with the issue, “hundreds” – of “Defensive Gun Uses” (DGUs) that never made the news, because no shots were fired.  From scaring off thugs in the skyway to warding off carjackers to holding a murder suspect for police, Minnesota carry permittees have racked up a solid record of…

…well, doing what they’re supposed to do and not doing what they’re not supposed to.

Which is not what Wes Skoglund warned us about.

Now, maybe it’s true that something that doesn’t happen isn’t really news.

Given the dire, almost paranoid warnings we got from the Twin Cities media, and the space outlets like the Strib have given the likes of Wes Skoglund and Heather Martens to spread them over the years, I’d beg to differ.