Category: Crime

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The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi (II)

Some of the women who declined to go public with their charges against Ghomeshi cited the case of Carla Ciccone. Ciccone wrote a thinly disguised account of her date with a C-List Canadian celebrity radio host whom she had always assumed was gay. As she described it, he was rude, inappropriate, creepy, and annoying. Most people deduced immediately that “Keith” was Jian Ghomeshi, and apparently, she received a torrent of abusive e-mails and blog-posts defending “Keith”.

Nobody deserves that kind of abuse, but nor does she deserve to be held up as an example. As she herself described it, in spite of endless opportunities to end the date and go home, she ended up spending the entire evening with him at a concert, and even accepting a ride home from him after deciding to call a taxi. After all, she “couldn’t just leave”, no matter how over-whelming the stench of his cologne. Why? She didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends? She herself suggests that she was still hoping to take advantage of his celebrity status for purposes of self-promotion.

I was concerned that he would somehow ruin my fledgling career in Canadian media forever if I bailed on him, as stupid as that sounds.

Now, we readily condemn a man who uses the leverage of his power and influence to extract sex from an unwilling woman.  Is there anything wrong with the idea of using sex to extract a favor from a man with power and influence?

In other words, there was an offer on the table and I didn’t want to withdraw it just yet.

One also has the impression that she kept throwing herself at him in order to see if he would at least kindly provide her with more ammunition for her blog, if he wasn’t going to be nice enough to promote her career.

A student from the University of Western Ontario related that Ghomeshi lost interest in her as soon as she suggested he help her land a job at “Q”. She made this suggestion, apparently, after he had hugged her twice from behind, “inappropriately”.

Has everyone completely lost their minds here? She doesn’t allege anything illegal or abusive in this story. What she does do is smear somebody, publicly, for having bad taste, while making sure we all get the message that she was so desirable that he just couldn’t help himself. Yes, ick.

And let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with excusing “Keith’s” behavior– obviously, he’s a jerk. But not that much of a jerk, in this story. He’s interested in sex, obviously, and he’s into the chase, and he presses on for too long, but we’ll never know if Ciconne really gave him the clear signal that she wasn’t interested or if she was playing him. She certainly did play him in one respect: blogging about the date is an invasion of his privacy. If the shoe were on the other foot, who would be up in arms about it? Nothing that Ghomeshi allegedly did on this “date”– by her own account– was so transgressive as to deserve to be slimed like this.

And this is the narrative that justifies several other women making anonymous accusations? Because they make their case one with Ciccone’s claim that the contempt she received was unearned?

Why does Ciccone get to turn into a narrative the fact that she is ostensibly clueless– if she really is that clueless? She doesn’t mind you thinking she is clueless? It’s preferable to you thinking she’s a tease? And why is she so careful to clue you in that “Keith” pursued her…. well… why would he, if she really felt the way she says she felt after first meeting him? Because she didn’t say so? Or because she pretended to be interested in him just to tease out more of a pursuit?

Like I said, the abuse directed at her is repellent, but criticism of a public posting is not. It’s fair game.

I have a strong suspicion that if Ciconne had said, right at the start of the evening, “I am not interested in a romantic relationship with you– is that clear?– but I would sure appreciate it if you would advance my career” there would have been no material for her to blog about.

We now hear that a former fellow at York University, student, Jim Hounslow, has come forward with allegations that Ghomeshi touched his genitals. Once. That would be more than 25 years ago. This is breathlessly reported at Yahoo as if students never made any moves on each other and if they did they now need to be shamed. It’s piling on and it’s as ugly if not uglier than the other allegations against Ghomeshi.

The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi Part I

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The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi (I)

The first lie is that anyone who dares to question the almost hysterical rush to pile on Jian Ghomeshi, is therefore defending Jian Ghomeshi, even when what is being criticized is the distasteful spectacle of the media hyping a particular issue beyond all reason and rationality. But hey, Ebola might be over soon: we need to whip up something to keep the public reading.

On Ghomeshi’s Actual Trial

I have now read and heard three specific commentators who insist that what this means for our justice system is that women are always telling the truth in these matters and must always be believed. This very morning on the CBC, one of their panelists in a discussion of why women are so reluctant to bring charges against a man who assaults her, asserted that the justice system must be changed so that the victim does not have any burden of proof.

The accused is guilty until proven innocent.

This is a repulsive, stupid, deeply offensive idea.

Joel Rubinoff in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record raised the issue of why, to his credulous incredulity, would anyone make up something so humiliating? So they must be telling the truth. I can’t believe that anyone, in 2014, still believes this. In first place, why would the woman be humiliated? Some guy was a jerk and you don’t want to say anything because it makes you feel humiliated? Is it awful to humiliate someone? It is awful to engage in the public shaming of someone? Is it different?

He couldn’t have invested the slightest effort in checking into his theory: has any woman ever lied about being sexually assaulted?

How wickedly casual this upending of the foundations of our justice system slips into the conversation. It should not be countenanced. It is outrageously, fundamentally, horribly wrong.

Oh, they say, but it makes it so difficult to punish people. It should be difficult. History is loaded to the brim with governments and authorities and mobs who made it easier to arrest and imprison people. It has taken hundreds of years and millions of lives to establish the principle that no one may be imprisoned unless it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he or she has committed a crime.  Be it noted that the U.S., in the case of black suspects and white juries, regularly dispenses with this rule.

The last reason anyone should contemplate sacrificing that principle is this media frenzy piling on one particularly distasteful individual. The second last reason might be because of one shooting in Ottawa.

It’s also something of amusing paradox that, while insisting that women are never believed, virtually everyone in the media believes them. They all go on and on about how Jian Ghomeshi is a monster who needs to be locked up because, as Elizabeth May says, you should “always believe the women” (unless you’re a 15-year-old pimp from Ottawa). Is there even a single pundit out there who does not believe the women? (Haven’t you even read “To Kill a Mockingbird”?) Yet, the blather from the CBC and Toronto Star and even the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, goes on and on about how our society constantly excuses male aggression and abuse and ridicules the victim. Who? Who is excusing it? I’m sure there are some marginal tabloids and perhaps Fox News, but nobody serious is defending Ghomeshi.

A national radio program is raising the allegations against Ghomeshi and treating all of them as fact and simultaneously complaining bitterly that nobody ever believes the women and that that should be fixed by simply ordaining that the women who charge men with bad behaviour should always automatically be believed, as if there is not the slightest evidence that any woman ever lied about what a man did to her.

It even made it’s way to the Ontario Legislature where, long, long before any trial or investigation, the NDP asserts that this proves that the government needs to do more to prevent workplace sexual harassment.

Like what? Make it “more illegal”?

The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi Part II

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Rohypnol

I am a bit surprised the poll did not ask students if they had ever had a drink spiked with the date-rape drug, Rohypnol (also known as flunitrazepam). If you are interested in facts, a study in the UK examined 120 claimed cases of use of “date-rape” drugs: not a single instance survived scrutiny.

I repeat: not one survived scrutiny.

The San Diego Medical Examiner’s office also looked into the issue– again, using real science– and found some evidence of possible flunitrazepam in about 1% of the alleged incidents. (Keep in mind that Rohypnol is sometimes– often– used intentionally, recreationally by people.)

Obviously, the investigators never watched Oprah or 20/20, or any of the other numerous programs on their mission of frightening the uninformed.

The University of Illinois, incidentally, casually asserts that date rape drugs are being used “at an increasing rate”. Really? And how do they know this? What previous studies are they comparing current studies to? What was the rate ten years ago, or fifteen years ago? They further assert that it is “often” brought back from Europe (where it can be prescribed as a sleep aid) by students.

I think I know where they got these conclusions from. They asked people their impressions. Do you think the use of date-rape drugs is going up or down? What do you think? Give us your honest opinion.

Do a search on the question of “does Rohypnol leave any traces” and you will find that a lot of websites use exactly the same text to say it does not. Look for the phrase:  “is colorless, odorless, and tasteless and dissolves without leaving any traces”.  They are all republishing information from same misinformed source.

It is not truthful. First of all, since about 10 years ago, the manufacturer, Roche, has made the tablets “less dispersible”. It doesn’t dissolve cleanly quickly, and colors the liquid in which it is mixed.

More importantly, Rohypnol can be detected in the urine of a person who ingested it for up to 60 hours afterwards. In the situation in which a woman suspects she has been secretly drugged and raped, she has at least two days to report it and have her urine tested for the unlikely possibility she really has been drugged.

But then, Rohypnol is supposed to cause amnesia: the victim is supposed to lose her memory of the assault, and even time before the assault. Then how would she know? That’s problematic, especially since alcohol has a similar effect. And that’s why when you do see cases of suspicion of the date-rape drug, victims report that they were bruised or sore in the groin area, and that’s what made them suspicious. They understand the problem: how did they know?

Even more problematic: many of the alleged symptoms of the drug are very, very similar to symptoms of excessive alcohol consumption. Would there be a temptation for a woman in this situation to under-state the amount of alcohol she has consumed?

Have you ever understated the amount of alcohol you have consumed?

The disturbing part of this– something which should be very disturbing to women who are genuinely concerned about sexual assault– is the number of women who have claimed to have been drugged and then raped. A charge of rape can often boil down to he said/she said arguments, and feminists urge us to always believe the woman, but if a woman is tested within 60 hours, it is possible to prove, scientifically, whether or not she was drugged. But if it can be proven that most of the claims of having been drugged and raped are false– at least, insofar as the drug part goes– a rational person might consider whether there’s something going on here that needs to be acknowledged by the legal system, by society, and by feminists.

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The Necessity of Secrets

To those who continue to insist that no law-abiding citizen has anything to fear from government surveillance or ubiquitous security cameras or cell phones that constantly report your location to your service provider: please go live in your own country with like-minded people and you can all watch each other all the time.

Better yet, someone needs to organize a group of volunteers to contact one of these congressmen or NSA administrators or FBI or CIA officials and ask for their address and their license number and make and model, and photos, and announce that this person is now going to be followed, 24/7, by these volunteer citizens, because this person doesn’t think the average American citizen has anything to fear from being spied on.

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Sentencing Children

Once upon a time, children who committed serious crimes were treated like adults and sent to prisons and hanged and flogged, like adults.

Then we became civilized. We realized that it was horribly unjust to treat, say, a 12-year-old, the same way we treat a 25-year-old, and to hold them to the same standards of behavior and responsibility.

We realized, for one thing, that children are not complete human beings yet. Their brains are not fully developed. They are undergoing big changes. They are not “responsible” in the same way a mature adult is responsible. So they need to be treated differently. They still have a chance to become a normal, well-functioning, rational adult human being.

And then we completely forgot about all those things because we are ourselves evil beings and we want to see people suffer, given the opportunity, so now we routinely charge adolescents “as adults” so we can maximize the severity of their punishments.

There are days, by golly, when our society looks like we have already embraced Sharia law. Gather the stones!

 

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Remorse

“It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse,” NY Times, 2014-06-08, from a story about two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who lured a third girl into a woods and stabbed her19 times.

I’ve heard this before and I always wonder why, if you didn’t feel remorse, you would think it was “weird” that you didn’t feel remorse. There’s a whole world of morality and philosophy and culture hiding in that little phrase. Does anybody really feel remorse or does anybody else just not think it’s weird?

Of course, we all act as if remorse is what you feel after you do something wrong. We act as if everyone knows what is wrong and what is right, and we respond to regrettable events appropriately, the way everyone would.

The girl who made the statement above believed it. Well, she says something like that. If you take everything people say at face value, you would have to say that she meant it– she thought she would feel remorse. She was prepared for it, but still committed to the task at hand– proving to “Slender Man” that she was evil enough to earn his trust.

She could have said to her victim, it’s nothing personal.

It is quite possible that most people don’t feel remorse. We all pay lip service to values like kindness and compassion but, as when we charge adolescents as adults in order to maximize the amount of suffering we can inflict upon them, we don’t seem so different.

The judge will sentence these girls to long, long terms in federal penitentiaries. And then she might just say to herself, “it was weird that I didn’t feel remorse”.

Oh but wait– the judge is an adult. She will have learned long ago to say– regardless of what she really feels– how sorry she is to have to punish these girls like this.

 

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Lies

Lies

In the astonishing case of Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair, a woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted by the general.

During the process of prosecuting Sinclair, it emerged that Sinclair and the woman had been conducting an affair for three years. The general was married. Adultery, in the army, is a serious offense, but it is not a criminal offense outside of the army: it is grounds for divorce. In any case, prosecutors dropped the assault charges after the credibility of the woman making the charges was shattered: personal e-mails showed that the affair was more than consensual. She badly wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her.

There was an outcry. Injustice! Yes, I agree, a person who knowingly lies about a serious matter like that should be punished. She almost caused General Sinclair to be court-martialed and imprisoned for life. You read that right: in the military, sexual assault can lead to a life sentence. So people are naturally outraged.

Except that she is not the target of her outrage.

They are outraged that General Sinclair “got away with it”!

Now, you may or may not agree that the woman should be punished for lying to prosecutors, but to continue to insist that General Sinclair should be punished for carrying on a consensual affair is absurd. The chief army prosecutor in the case, Colonel Helixon, upon discovering the complainant’s dishonesty, moved to have the case dismissed, as he should have. But his superior officers, aware of the growing public controversy– Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was demanding a change to the way the army handles cases of sexual assault– ordered him to press ahead with a case he did not believe in. He was so troubled by this, he threatened to withdraw from the case, and seemed to have some kind of mental breakdown. He did eventually withdraw but his successor, Colonel Stelle, came to the same conclusion and conceded that he would be unlikely to win a conviction if the case went to trial. This time, the brass acceded to his recommendation to withdraw charges against Sinclair.

That is not an insignificant fact: the prosecution believed that a judge would not believe the charges against Sinclair. In other words, there was strong evidence that it was nothing more than a consensual affair that had gone sour, and when it was discovered, the supposed victim realized that she herself could be charged and punished unless she insisted that she had not consented, that she had, in fact, been raped. And, what the hell, the General only seemed interested in sex. She wasn’t having his way with him anymore.

It is possible, if not likely, that she was motivated by revenge.

Incidentally, Senator Gillibrand, a Democrat, has received a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association. She describes herself as having one of the most conservative voting records in the state of New York, when she was a Congressional Representative.

A rather fawning profile of Senator Gillibrand in Vogue. Apparently “her eyes flicker with joy” when discussing gay rights, according to author Jonathan Van Meter.

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The Model A Ford

The phenomenon of Rob Ford really cries out for a new explanation of politics and scandal and democracy. We have a politician who has committed numerous egregious offenses and he continues to poll about even with his most serious challenger. Everyone professes shock and outrage but most voters don’t care. A typical comment by a Ford supporter: “The media make too a big deal out of it.” It has become, of course, impossible to pretend the media is lying. So it’s just “not that big of a deal”.

Anthony Wiener had to resign his congressional seat because he sent women pictures of his crotch– and persisted in lying about it after the evidence was clear. Eliot Spitzer, a very effective State Attorney General who showed he was willing to take on the big brokerages and banks– all by his lonesome self– had to resign because he admitted seeing an escort. Wiener and Eliot clearly gave up too early. They clearly were wrong to look ashamed and embarrassed. They should have given the media the finger. They should have said, “that’s my persona life and none of your business.”

Ford has an achievement: any new scandal will be ineffective because everybody’s heard just about the worst things you can hear about a politician. So a new video shows him smoking crack? Duh! We knew that. And he makes obscene comments about a female challenger for mayor? Ha ha, what a character! He’s drunk and stupid and belligerent? Attaboy! He’s our very own Don Cherry– except for the drunk part.

As someone pointed out on CBC radio today, there has not been a broad-based, resonant cry for him to resign from other politicians, which is curious. It was explained that Kathleen Wynn, of the provincial liberals, can’t go after him because she will need some of his supporters to win the next election, which is imminent. Tim Hudak, the opposition leader, and Harper, the federal prime-minister, won’t go after him because, first of all, he is a fellow conservative and he helps raise money and move volunteers for the cause, and, secondly, there are relationships going back to his father, a long time Conservative Party operative.

There is something akin to the Goebbels “Big Lie” theory here, except that nobody really believes it’s a lie. They just don’t care. Ford has been famously attentive to the concerns of his constituents (he has always made a point of responding to phone calls and messages), and who wants to pay more taxes? Who doesn’t believe that you could cut jobs and outsource without consequence? Who doesn’t fantasize standing up to the bureacrats, those smart-assed educated elite snobs who make me feel as stupid as Rob Ford?

What is remarkable to me is that Ford, like a New York mob leader in the 1950’s, seems confident and smug and contemptuous of the establishment. We think he knows there are rules about conduct and behaviour and attitude and we think he knows he has broken them, but I think he really believes that well behaved intellectuals and managers and politicians are all frauds and that the style and manners of the elite are nothing more than tricks of the trade, charades, and kabuki theatre: now my serious, solemn mask, now my bemused mask, now my congenial sympathetic mask. That’s why he likes to say, I am what I am. What you see is what you get.

So my fantasy is not that all the Rob Fords in the world get their due: but that some day we may get a liberal Rob Ford who sets out to do for working people what assholes like Rob Ford and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have been doing for years for the investor class.

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Obama’s Biggest Mistake

If we do turn into a police state some time in the future and everyone is feeling safe and secure and watched, Obama will not be remembered as a hero of that movement: there are no heroes of that kind of future. No one will brag, in the future, that they were so frightened of terrorists that they acquiesced to the erosion of one of our most fundamental of civil liberties: the right to not be watched.

They will be ashamed. We know this because neither George Bush or Obama or any other leading politician was willing to campaign on a platform that included the idea of instituting massive warrantless surveillance of every U.S. citizen.

But if America comes to its senses in the next few years and realizes just how awful the consequences of the surveillance state is, Obama will certainly be regarded as a jerk, who made one of the worst decisions in U.S. Presidential history, who suffered the most profound failure of imagination of a Democratic leader since Lyndon Johnson forgot to end the Viet Nam war after he realized it could never be won.

Yes, Obama will be known as the Lyndon Johnson of the 21st century, a smart, dynamic leader who made numerous good decisions and one or two incredibly horrible decisions that permanently scarred the perception of his administration. Johnson achieved many remarkable things, including landmark civil rights legislation and anti-poverty programs. But he could not bear to make himself vulnerable to conservatives who would paint him as a coward if he did the right thing and withdrew from Viet Nam. He sent 55,000 Americans to their deaths to pay for his ego. Obama could not bear to make himself vulnerable to conservatives who would accuse him of having blood on his hands if any Americans died in a terrorist attack which, in their fantasy world, could have been prevented with the NSA’s massive surveillance program.

This is not an exaggeration or hyperbole: 55,000 American young men died because Lyndon Johnson couldn’t bear the thought that Republicans would call him a coward or a defeatist. And that is the essence of Republican politics: they didn’t require that Johnson put on a backpack and boots and go into the jungles of Viet Nam and shoot a few Viet Cong to prove his manhood. No, no, no, because Republicans would never send themselves there to do that. No, what they demanded is that he be big and brave and send someone else to get shot at and killed and maimed, so he could sleep at night knowing his manhood was secure.

Obama’s motivation is similar: he can’t bear the idea of being soft on terrorism, so he is extra harsh, assassinating targets without the slightest process, due or otherwise, and refusing to act against administration officials who conducted torture and arbitrary seizure and imprisonment– and there are a lot of really repulsive former administration officials in that category. He just couldn’t bear it. But nobody says, “I can’t bear to prosecute people who look like me and live like me and work in the same buildings”. They say, “it would be too complicated, too difficult. It would raise constitutional issues. Executive privilege. They had good intentions. It would set a bad precedent. It would tie up prosecutors for ages”. The same reasons they give for not prosecuting individuals at the big banks and brokerages who clearly defrauded Americans of billions of dollars.

What makes it all even more stunning is the fact that so many people in the Bush administration — conservative Republicans all!– were absolutely convinced that the program was illegal and unconstitutional. Many of them even resigned posts at the NSA rather than participate in a program they absolutely believed was wrong. The Bush Administration persecuted them, sending the FBI to search their homes and confiscate their home computers and terrorize their families.

And then the Democrat, the liberal progressive Democrat, comes into office and not only tolerates the continued violation of the constitution– he increases it! He goes further. He even approves the assassinations of Americans living abroad.

The contrast between Obama’s complete and abject surrender to the paranoids who run the intelligence services and his campaign speeches is heart-breaking. It is heart-breaking because he raised the hopes of people who believed passionately that it was possible to bring decency and good sense and wisdom to the White House by electing this elegant, articulate, visionary young senator. Raised those hopes so high, and then crushed them.

So even if some politician launched a campaign for the presidency next year and vowed that he would stop the NSA from warrantless spying on every American, you could never believe that he would actually do it. He might believe it himself for a while, but then there would be a moment when he realizes he might actually win the election, and a meeting in the White House before he takes office, and he would be surrounded by high-ranking officials in the intelligence gathering community and they would solemnly insist that Americans will die and he will be blamed if he doesn’t immediately reverse himself, and a moment at home alone at night when he considers a headline blaming a terrorist attack on the inadequate manhood of the man in the hood.

Are you listening, Rand Paul? He says what Obama said, but I can picture Michael Hayden sitting in an office while an aide discusses Paul’s vision of a surveillance-less future… and laughing.

More on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

How the FBI really protects Americans from “terrorist threats”.

Canadian law on “unreasonable” search and seizure.

A brilliant documentary on the NSA’s warrantless surveillance programs.

Very, very depressing to see that the New York Times had the story about the secret surveillance program and was about to publish it when the White House called senior editors and the publisher to a meeting and used the old “blood on your hands” canard to convince them not to publish.

South Carolina is considering a law prohibiting law enforcement agencies from collecting GPS data from cell phones without a warrant.  This is a news item.  It should not be.  It is absurd that any state should pass a law to protect a right that is already guaranteed in the constitution (the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure).

I read about this this evening– in Reddit, I believe– and then I couldn’t find it in any news source anywhere.  Maybe it was an error.

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The Appropriate Sentence for a Crime

Almost everybody loves to whine about criminals getting off easy. That’s all he got? Four years? Five years? Twenty years? It’s not enough. They should lock him up for life. No wonder there’s so much crime!

I don’t know of any divine tablet or sacred spreadsheet that tells us what a “light” sentence is or what is a sufficient punishment for, say, a burglary, or an assault, or a rape. People routinely act as if they know but they usually only say it should be more than what it was. Always more. If you asked someone out of the blue how many years in prison a man should serve for, say, rape, I doubt that most people have a clue as to how to arrive at a particular number.

How long should a man serve for conning people out of money? 144 years?

The most useful measure, in my opinion, is the relative seriousness of a crime. And the “seriousness” of a crime should be measured in harm.  And what is a harm?  If you have deprived someone of a material good, or health, life, or limb. There, we are on firmer ground, though not in the clear.

What types of crime are there?

There should never be any punishment for thought crimes. You would think that would be obvious– I would have thought it would be obvious– but in the so-called war on terror, the U.S. is now locking up young men for talking about jihad even if they cannot be shown to have taken a single actual step towards committing an act of terrorism. Talking about a crime is not really a crime unless you proceed to commit the crime. Talking about using drugs without using drugs is not illegal. Talking about having sex without having sex is not illegal. But talking about jihad without doing any jihad will get you 20 years, especially if an enthusiastic FBI informant offers to supply you with guns and bombs.

There are “victimless” crimes like possession of drugs for personal use, prostitution, possession of pornography (which, under the Canadian criminal code, used to include depictions of homosexual acts). When people try to justify prosecution for these crimes they frequently give, as reasons, consequences that are already illegal under other laws: driving while drunk, assault, exploitation of minors. But if a man (or a woman) uses threats of physical violence to force another person into acts of prostitution, I believe he or she should be prosecuted for a) exploitation (taking the money earned by someone else’s forced labour) or b) assault. But if two independent adults agree to have sex with each other in exchange for money, the government should stay out of it.

Drugs are more complicated: prescription drugs should be regulated to ensure quality and accuracy of dosages.   Alcohol should be regulated to prevent minors from having access but what if someone brews their own?  I think it is possible to prohibit giving alcohol to minors but if a person wants to consume home-brewed liquors in his own home, the government should stay out of it.  And the government has no business telling anyone they can’t grow a particular plant and then stick its leaves in their mouths and set them on fire. As long as they don’t get behind the wheel of a car after doing so.

But then, why should the tobacco industry be regulated?  You see– it does get complicated.  There is a difference: the shareholders and managers of tobacco companies profit by deceiving customers into believing their product is harmless (and, at one time, glamorous).  That invites legitimate government regulation.  Could we have a world where commercial sales of tobacco is banned entirely but if someone wants to grow some in his backyard and smoke it that is entirely up to the individual?

Should motorcycle owners be required to wear helmets?  And if they don’t, would society be okay with denying medical care to a motorcyclist who chose not to wear a helmet and got into an accident that caused a head injury?  Ayn Rand might say, sure.  Our society would find that hard to stomach.  In the end, the most rational choice may be to require helmets.

There are property crimes. I think there should be a big difference between the punishment for property crimes and the punishment for crimes of violence. And I think the punishment for property crimes should be focused on restitution, not on revenge.

Crimes of violence should be taken very seriously, and repeat offenders should receive escalating sentences. This is one area where I have some sympathy for victims’ rights organizations– with limitations. Quite often, we hear mythical tales of someone who committed numerous violent acts and kept getting released after light sentences. In many instances, the story is more complicated than that: our judges are not stupid.

Capital Punishment is absurd: if we really believe that life is sacred and the taking of a life is a horrible offense, the last message we want to send to society is that we will do it too. Besides, as DNA testing has shown, we are all too frequently wrong in determining who committed the crime and a capital sentence cannot be reversed.

Unfortunately, what has happened in the U.S. is a ratcheting up of criminal sentencing. And the word “ratcheting” is exactly what I mean. A ratchet, if you don’t know, is a box wrench on a handle that can be switched to allow the user to quickly turn the handle back and forth while applying force in one direction only. In the U.S., over the last forty years, there has been constant political pressure to lengthen sentences without the slightest movement backwards. It has become politically impossible–thanks to the “tough on crime” wing of the Republican party– to advocate for lighter sentences for anything (though there are signs the U.S. is coming to their senses on the issue). As a result, sentences for some crimes in the U.S. have moved beyond severe to ridiculous and then to the sadistic and finally absurd. Yes, there are people in federal prisons in the U.S. serving 20-25 years for possession of marijuana. If you’re a rational person, you probably don’t believe me.

The benchmark sentence for violent crime should be 25 years for murder and there should be a chance of parole after 15 years. Hey, I can be specific. And you can quibble all you like about the exact number, but I believe that 25 is a rational, reasonable guess as to how much is appropriate and constructive. I believe that even a murderer should have some hope of being released some day if only to provide him with an incentive to change his life while in prison. Prison guards will tell you that it is not helpful for a prisoner to know that he will never be released no matter what his behavior is like, in prison.  He or she has nothing to lose.

Scale that down to three months for a basic assault that does not include sufficient violence to inflict permanent injury to the victim for a person who is not a repeat offender. It seems rational to me to give suspended sentences to first-time offenders in this category, particularly if they take steps to turn their lives around, especially making personal, public apologies and restitution.

The rest I will leave alone– it would take years of work and analysis and practice to develop a useful, sensible scale of appropriate punishments for violent crimes that fall in between murder and assault. Hey, we have that: it’s called the criminal justice system. It needs to be fixed, within parameters like the ones I suggest above, but it’s possible, because we do still have the miracle of rule by law.

And we must stop adjusting criminal sentences by blandly pleading for “more”.