Month: January 2018

Turkey, Poland Compete To See Who Can Fuck Free Speech Harder in 2018

Let’s meet our contestants in this race to the bottom!

ByLock
Only terrorists would use this!

Weighing in at 83 million residents, Turkey has decided to make the downloading of a messaging app illegal, with possession of it subjecting the thought criminal to prison time, loss of employment, and social scorn for being a terrorist.  The app is called ByLock, and it’s basically a watered-down version of WhatsApp that has now reached over a million downloads (wow, that’s a lot of terrorists!).  The reason this app earned contraband status was because an opposition political party movement called Gülen allegedly liked to use the app to communicate.

Weighing in at 38 million residents, Poland has a pet peeve.  You see, some people have been referring to Nazi concentration camps that existed in Poland during World War II as “Polish death camps.”  Poland takes umbrage at this depiction because, while there were indisputably death camps in Poland, they were not “Polish;” they were German.  So the correct way to handle this situation is not to educate the public but to criminalize the stringing of 3 words together.  Those who use the term “Polish death camps” instead of “death camps in Poland” will be subject to a 3 year term in a Polish death camp — er, I mean, prison.

Polish Death Camp
This is a Polish death camp

The scoreboard stands as follows:

Turkey’s measure is specifically intended to stifle political dissent, which earns them 12 points.  They also earn 5 points for futility, since there’s no special technology behind ByLock and dissidents could simply switch to virtually any messaging app.  They earn 3 more points for accidentally arresting over a thousand people who were mistakenly thought to have downloaded the app.  They earn 1 more point for being ignored by the mainstream media until they accidentally arrested the wrong people (apparently it wasn’t enough of a story when they arrested actual users of an innocent messaging app to silence political dissidents).  And they earn 2 more points because Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, smells of bad döner.

Poland gets 6 points for the stiff prison sentence for such a subtle linguistic nuance.  They get 2 points for criminalizing the saying of something for no other reason than that it embarrasses them.  They get 5 points for using the Holocaust as an excuse to be authoritarian.  They get 2 more points for criminalizing something Barack Obama once did.  And, I give them 3 points for being a secular, democratic nation from which we should be able to expect better.  But, I deduct 2 points for pissing off Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who puzzlingly equates this with Holocaust denial (no Ben, it’s not Holocaust denial, it’s just stupidity and thuggery).

That’s 23 points for Turkey and 16 points for Poland so far.  Let’s see if Poland can catch up, or perhaps another country will join the battle, which is traditionally initiated by having the country’s leader get on Twitter and announce their candidacy using the hashtag #HoldMyBeer.

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Nassar Judge Wishes She Could Sentence Defendant To Be Raped In Prison

Judge Rosemarie AquilinaLarry Nassar, the infamous USA Gymnastics doctor recently convicted of sexual assault upon children and possession of child pornography (some of which he made himself), is, to say the least, not a likable guy.  Considering that he is now 54 years old and was sentenced to 60 years on the federal child pornography charge last month, he already had an effective life sentence before today’s sentencing on the state sex assault charges.

At today’s sentencing, Michigan Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina decided on a sentence of 40 to 175 years for the sexual assault charges.  Considering he plead guilty to assaulting 10 children and nearly 200 others have accused him of the same, that sentence isn’t at all surprising.  What did surprise me, however, were the comments coming from Judge Aquilina:

“It is my honor to sentence you because, sir, you do not deserve to walk outside of a prison ever again. Anywhere you walk, destruction would occur to those most vulnerable. I just signed your death warrant.”

Perhaps it’s just because I’m preparing for a law school ethics exam, but this immediately suggested judicial bias to me.  A judge has a duty to recuse his or herself in the event of either personal bias or the appearance of the same.  By itself, this probably would not be enough to prove judicial misconduct, but was enough for me to read through coverage of earlier proceedings, where Judge Aquilina stated as follows:

“Our Constitution does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment. If it did, I have to say, I might allow what he did to all of these beautiful souls, these young women in their childhood, I would allow some or many people to do to him what he did to others.”

Did she seriously just say that, if not restrained by the Constitution, she would hand out sentences that ordered the sexual assault of a convict?  This makes me question not just her personal bias but her fitness to be a judge.  Rape is not acceptable in our society, it’s not “funny” or “cool” or “tough” to wish it on someone, and that doesn’t change if it takes place in a prison or if the victim is an evil person.

If our goal is to dismantle the “rape culture,” Judge Aquilina’s comments are not helpful in moving us forward.  Mr. Nassar’s victims deserved justice, and in order to best deliver that justice and ensure no possibility of appeal for judicial misconduct, comments like the above should be omitted from the courtroom.

5

NYPD Upset That They Will Have Fewer “Get Out of Jail Free” Cards to Give to Family in 2018

Many years ago, I was hanging out with a police officer friend of mine at a bar.  One of her police friends said he was about to drive home, and I asked if he was good to drive.  He chuckled a bit and said, “Of course, what are they going to do, arrest me?”  He then left the bar, far more intoxicated than I would prefer to be behind the wheel, and presumably drove home.

He was right, of course: assuming he didn’t get into an accident thus forcing a report to be made, while you may be shocked by his attitude, you probably know that police officers will not cite or arrest each other for pretty much anything that doesn’t have a complaining civilian witness, and sometimes not even then.  This “professional courtesy” is also often extended to their families by providing the family member business cards with little notes on them.  Having such a card is not a license to kill, but it is probably going to get you out of a minor speeding ticket.

It takes special audacity, however, to be the largest police union in the country and to take this to the next level by printing up plastic credit-card like “get out of jail free” cards, and giving each officer 32 of these cards every year.  It takes even more audacity to complain to the media when the union reduces that number down to 20:

“They are treating active members like shit, and retired members even worse than shit,” griped an NYPD cop who retired on disability. “All the cops I spoke to were . . . very disappointed they couldn’t hand them out as Christmas gifts.”

A few points.

First, it’s clear that these cards are expected to grant special privileges upon the holder, to wit: that they will receive leniency upon being stopped for committing a crime.  Otherwise, they’d make pretty lousy gifts.  “Oh, thanks, Dad, a 2018 edition of a worthless card from your former employer!”  Of course not.

Second, this is corruption.  It’s not major, “let’s get a law passed in exchange for cash” corruption.  But all are entitled to be treated equally under the law, and if some are treated “more equally than others,” we end up with nonsense like NYC’s gun licensing scheme, where for a full century, anyone from literal mobsters to random rich people are entitled to their Second Amendment rights where the people as a whole are not.

NYPD Get Out of Jail Free Card
Yes, seriously.

Third, the reason cops want 32 of these cards is not because they have 32 family members to give them to, but because they are literally selling them on eBay.  For a $50 donation to your local corrupt cop, you too can have a get-out-of-jail-free card.  For a bit more, you can get one signed by an actual cop.

It’s a problem that it’s long time we address, and the first step in fixing that problem is treating this like the corruption that it is.  NYPD rank-and-file cops simply see this as a perk of the job — as “professional courtesy.”  But there’s nothing courteous about it to the general public, who is deprived of the public safety benefit they are paying for when people think they no longer have to follow the law.  Police officers and their family should be setting the example when it comes to lawfulness — not seeking to be above the law.

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