Dayton City Paper » commentary

Commentary Forum 3/26

Alex Culpepper — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:00:12 +0000

Forum Center: Shall the ‘truth serum’ set you free from Fifth Amendment rights?

By Alex Culpepper

James Holmes is the man accused of walking into an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater on July 20, 2012, taking out his guns and opening fire, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more. After the incident, he was promptly arrested and booked on nearly 170 counts of murder and other charges. He was arraigned March 12 in a Colorado court and Judge William Sylvester entered a not guilty plea for him. Holmes’ lawyers may eventually enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity for an April 1 hearing in which prosecutors may seek the death penalty. If Holmes enters the insanity plea and it is accepted, the death penalty will probably be off the table. He may have a lighter sentence if convicted and he possibly could be acquitted and serve time in a mental institution rather than a prison.

There’s a catch in it for Holmes’ defense, though. If Holmes submits an insanity plea, then Judge Sylvester has given the green light for prosecutors to interrogate him while doctors administer a “truth serum.” This serum is a barbiturate fed intravenously and is intended to lower inhibitions and bring forth information normally unavailable in a sober condition. This process is known as a “narcoanalytic interview,” and it is both unusual in a criminal trial and a possible violation of a person’s constitutional rights.

Supporters of the judge’s decision in this case have a simple goal: they hope to find evidence Holmes was legally sane during the shooting and competent to stand trial for murder and other crimes. They believe evidence from the narcoanalytic interview would provide what they need to support their case. Opponents of the decision to use truth serum have a few problems with it. First, they say the attitude among medical experts is the narcoanalytic interview is not reliable. They say people can still lie under the drug’s effects and can be subject to suggestion, thus giving false statements. Then, opponents say this is a potential violation of the Fifth Amendment because Holmes would lose his right to remain silent while under the effects of the drug and could unlawfully incriminate himself. Further, violations of unreasonable search and seizure and due process under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments are possible, too, according to Judith Edersheim, the co-director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior.

The determination of whether Holmes’ plea is not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity is an important factor in this case. To get the latter plea to trial, he must first submit to the narcoanayltic interview. Courts are in place to allow people to seek justice under the law and supporters of using the truth serum want the interview to happen because they believe information from it will greatly support their case. Courts also must ensure that the rights of both plaintiff and defendant are protected, and opponents fear drugging someone and getting him or her to recall events of an alleged crime may violate the Fifth Amendment right to prevent self-incrimination.

Forum Question of the Week

A Colorado judge has approved government use of a “narcoanalytic interview” for the purpose of confirming whether accused Aurora, Colo. shooter James Holmes had been legally insane when he engaged in his shooting spree. Is this judge’s decision sound? Or is it a challenge to our Constitution’s right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment?

The sad demise of common sense

By Marianne Stanley

Did the judge who recently approved the use of the administration of a pharmaceutical drug for the express purpose of determining if James Holmes is sane or insane make a sound decision or did he violate the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that allows the accused to “remain silent”? If we take our own “slippery slope” fears out of it, the judge’s decision is a sound one. Why?

1. The right to remain silent is there to protect us from having to incriminate ourselves in criminal activity. Holmes is already “incriminated” in this crime; there is no question that he was the killer so “taking the Fifth” is moot in this particular case.

2. The legal system’s job is always to balance the rights of the individual against the rights of society.

3. Pretending that our Constitution is still intact and that its amendments are still valid is a joke. Within the past decade or two, we have been stripped of most of our long-cherished rights under the First, Fourth, Sixth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments anyway. People are arrested for exercising their rights of free speech, right to assemble peaceably, right to petition government for a redress of their grievances. They are no longer “secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Police often unreasonably stop pedestrians and drivers and search them with little or no cause. Drug raids involve the seizure of property before conviction. Cars are now towed in many communities for unpaid parking tickets. None of our “papers or effects” are secure anymore with government eavesdropping and all of our records up for grabs, from our financial to our medical data. There is often no speedy trial and courts routinely impose unreasonable fines and cruel and unusual punishment on decent American citizens. Our “right to privacy” has been completely obliterated with scarcely a whimper from the public.

4. This is not about a person being “compelled to be a witness against himself.” This is about a person being accurately, fairly, thoroughly diagnosed prior to trial for the condition of insanity since an insane person, under the law, cannot be tried for a crime but must be treated in an institution for the mentally ill. The Fifth Amendment was never intended to apply to the determination of insanity. The issue here is really about whether or not we should be able to use all the tools at our disposal, including psychological evaluations and pharmaceuticals to reach an accurate diagnosis so that it can be determined if Holmes is fit to stand trial for a crime or not. If he is sane, anything less than prison is not secure enough to prevent further harm by him.

Sociopaths and psychopaths are amazingly skillful at duping, using and outwitting others. Why would we not be in favor of using any and all methods to help us uncover the truth of mental capacity? This man, if sane, needs to be imprisoned, safely kept away from the rest of society. Law is ideally about seeking to do the least injustice in its pursuit of justice. Sometimes, individuals are the ones who lose in this tug o’ war; sometimes it’s society. Since we are putting the “rights” of a mass murderer up against the rights of the rest of us, we should win.

This whole “argument” about whether or not we can drug this man to obtain needed information prior to his trial reminds me of the similarly asinine discussions about banning assault weapons. How stupid not to! But the media is powerful in its service to those who control it and who seek certain beneficial outcomes, like the sale of more and more deadly weapons without thought to the outcome. Sadly, it is these self-serving few, not common sense, that are calling the shots these days. Same goes here. It would be just plain stupid to not use every available method to determine if this guy is insane or just play-acting to stay out of prison. Countless innocent lives may depend on it.

Marianne Stanley is an attorney, college professor and former journalist who believes many of our nation’s ills could be cured if our children were taught critical thinking skills beginning at the elementary level and continuing through middle and high school. She can be reached at MarianneStanley@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Justice’s sword calls for truth

By Rob Scott

The protection of citizens is the government’s main role, which includes crime prevention. The punishment of crime, if proved, is also the duty of government. What needs to be weighed is the extent to which the government can do away with a citizen’s individual rights for the fulfillment of the government’s duty. Or the philosophical argument: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Regardless of who committed the crime or what crime was committed, there is an ideal to carry out fair and swift justice. Many see Lady Justice depicted wearing a blindfold holding a doubled-edged sword in her left hand and a set of scales suspended in her right hand. The sword symbolizes the power of reason and justice which is wielded either for or against any party. The scales symbolize the measure of the strengths of a case’s support and opposition. This is where the saying and ideal of “justice is blind” has been established.

The Colorado movie theater shooting case will likely go down as one of the more famous cases this decade, which will test these two notions of the protection of citizens and justice. The national attention of the incident, including the legal maneuvers in the case, will be closely watched. One of the legal maneuvers the prosecution and defense are grappling with in the case may have effects across the country.

Colorado Judge William Sylvester ruled, in the event the alleged shooter James Holmes pleads insanity, the prosecutors would be permitted to interrogate him while he is under the influence of a medical drug designed to loosen him up and get him to talk. The idea is the “narcoanalytic interview” would be used to confirm whether or not Holmes had been legally insane when he embarked on his shooting spree on July 20, 2012.

During the interview, the prosecution wants to ask Holmes questions about the incident. Obviously, these questions asked are for the purpose of building evidence in the case against Holmes and brings in his Fifth Amendment rights, including due process concerns.

The Fifth Amendment protects a defendant from being forced to incriminate themselves. The privilege against compelled self-incrimination is the constitutional right of a person to refuse to answer questions or otherwise give testimony against them. When someone “pleads the Fifth,” they are stating their right to refuse to answer a question because the response could provide self-incriminating evidence of an illegal act that is punishable.

However, when a defendant enters a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the rules change somewhat. In order for medical experts to get a mental evaluation to submit an expert opinion, the defendant must cooperate with the experts to get an admissible competency report.

Normally, an evidentiary hearing is held to determine whether the defendant was insane or is insane and thus cannot stand trial for the alleged crime due to the lack of the mental state required. During this hearing, expert opinions are admitted and weighed by the court to make the determination.

The judge in this case must feel the narcoanalytic interview will be helpful for the court to make that determination. Though not discussed by any news reports or the court, any evidence during the narcoanalytic interview could be excluded for the purposes of trial.

Though there are Fifth Amendment concerns, the interview will assist the court in determining if Holmes was insane at the time of the shooting. The court will weigh its probative value and can decide later if any evidence adduced can be used for trial purposes. If the court rules Holmes was not insane, then the defense will have an opportunity to motion the court to limit the evidence recovered by the prosecution from the interview.

Like Lady Justice, the court will weigh the evidence and reason through the issues.

Rob Scott is a practicing attorney at Oldham & Deitering, LLC. Scott is the Chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party and the founder of the Dayton Tea Party. He can
be contacted at rob@oldhamdeitering.com or www.gemcitylaw.com.

Commentary Forum, 3/5

Alex Culpepper — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:30:39 +0000

Commentary Forum Center: Court will decide whether Freshwater can teach with holy water

By Alex Culpepper

People refer to it as the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” but it is officially known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Basically, this 1925 case charged John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science teacher, with teaching evolution in his classes, which was a violation of the Butler Law that prohibited teaching evolution in Tennessee schools. This famous case pitted two legendary attorneys –William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow– against each other and it ended with Scopes losing and paying a fine. The Butler Law stood for decades afterward, but two legacies remain from the case: evolution as sound science gained traction with the public at large and the issue involving science, evolution and religion in the classroom remains controversial to this day. Ohio has inherited these winds.

John Freshwater was a science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, until the school board decommissioned him in 2011 for using religious materials to teach science in his classes and introducing creationist doctrine in his evolution lessons. Two separate courts heard Freshwater’s case and both sided with the school board. Freshwater recently brought his case before the Ohio Supreme Court and has been aided legally by a Virginia civil liberties organization known as the Rutherford Institute. His defense is that it was not clear which materials or methods were acceptable in his district and his teaching is protected as free speech. The Court heard oral arguments Wednesday, Feb. 27, and a decision is forthcoming.

School board lawyers leveled charges that Freshwater pushed his religious beliefs on students he taught. They charged him with violating the constitutional Separation of Church and State by displaying a Bible in the classroom and handing out religious-based material that challenges current scientific findings. Part of the argument presented by school board lawyers is that a teacher at a state institution surrenders his or her right to free speech when in the classroom. Further, school district administrators ordered Freshwater to cease his religious overtures in class when they caught wind of his activities.

Freshwater’s counsel, however, claimed that the school board “exaggerated” the teacher’s religion-pushing activities in the classroom and showed hostility toward religion. The defense argument went on to state Freshwater used religious materials as an expression of free speech and academic freedom in order to address controversial scientific issues. In further support of the teacher’s methods, his lawyer reported his students performed well on standardized tests. As for the Bible, Freshwater’s lawyer says displaying a Bible does not equal religious indoctrination and it mostly laid on his desk among other books.

John Freshwater’s case is not the first of its kind to surface in Ohio. In 2002, the Ohio State School Board sought to have intelligent design approved as appropriate subject matter. Then in 2011, representatives from the Springboro School District attempted to get creationism in the curriculum. Outside influences stalled efforts to move forward in both cases. Freshwater and his supporters have reason to be hopeful, though, because all of those present at the Court’s oral hearing believe that the justices’ questions helped the teacher’s cause. The verdict, though, may be some months away.

Commentary Forum Question of the Week:

Should the decision of two lower Ohio courts, two years ago, supporting John Freshwater’s termination for “injecting his religious views” into his science classes, still stand? Should the First Amendment protect a teacher who includes his or her religious views along with the state-prescribed curriculum, or does it violate separation of church and state?

Commentary Forum Left: Teaching DEVO-lution in the classroom

By Marianne Stanley

We have, as human beings, such a great ability to complicate the simple and to oversimplify the complicated. In the case of firing a science teacher in the Mount Vernon School District, we have done the former. This case is really very simple.

Contrary to popular Tea Party or Far Right talking points, we are not a “Christian Nation” whose founding fathers supported Christianity. The whole point of leaving the advanced civilizations of Europe for our shores was to escape any kind of religiosity in the culture. This is the reason our Constitution expressly forbids any “establishment of religion” in our oft-cited First Amendment. Separation of Church and State is an imperative here, as emphasized and re-emphasized by Congress and the Supreme Court for the past 250-plus years.

According to hearing records, Freshwater:

1) Branded an eighth-grade student’s arm with a cross running almost the entire length of his inner forearm, using a science tool, the Tesla coil.

2) Refused to teach evolution as fact as required by the official school science curriculum, calling it a discredited theory.

3) Preached Creationism and Intelligent Design, using a brochure called “Answers in Genesis” and a pro-Creationism movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” to teach his students that science is wrong, not only about evolution but also that homosexuality is a sin, making every gay person a sinner.

4) Encouraging prayer, keeping his Bible on his desk and making statements like “Catholics aren’t Christians.”

While people who share strong fundamentalist Christian beliefs probably applaud John Freshwater as a courageous teacher who is simply “telling it like it is,” they would just as likely respond with explosive anger if Freshwater were a Muslim who kept the Koran on his desk and burned a Muslim symbol onto a student’s arm.

In other words, oftentimes, in order to get an unmuddled, very clear perspective on an issue, we need change only some of the details. Switch it out. Turn it around. It is in this broadening of view that we can test whether our oftentimes quite powerful feelings about issues are based on fact or simply on strongly held personal beliefs. Our beliefs, after all, are quite sacred to each of us. We hold onto them for dear life, fearing that if we let them go we will be lost, rudderless, without identity or direction. It is understandable that people fight so much about religion and politics. We fight hardest when we are most afraid. None of us wants to be left naked and alone without the strong identity we have so carefully fostered and grown for ourselves.

But the trick is to be aware of this phenomenon and to respect the fact that each and every “other” also has that need, that fear and that right to be free from having beliefs foisted on us or shoved down our throats. Nowhere is this more vital than in the classroom where teachers are hopefully there to “educate,” a Latin word meaning “to lead out of darkness.” Thus, personal religious beliefs are to be kept far removed from a public school classroom.

The Far Right, over the past decade, has been fairly effective in casting doubt on fact and attacking the validity of science, knowing that an uneducated public is the perfect fertile ground for planting and growing propaganda. We have seen this in everything from the often tragically pooh-poohed science on Climate Change to the imbecilic insistence that it is scientific fact that women’s bodies “shut down” rape when it happens so they can’t become pregnant.

John Freshwater’s right of “free speech” in the realm of his religious beliefs ends at the door of his public school classroom. He signed on to teach science, not religion, and he clearly violated the terms of his contract when he continued to refuse the school directives to stop substituting his own religious beliefs for the science curriculum year after year. The real problem isn’t that he was fired for this untenable behavior, but that it took them far too many years to do it.

Commentary Forum Right: Teacher’s firing not about his rights

By Rob Scott

Many constitutional scholars, education officials and religious leaders are looking to the Ohio Supreme Court regarding a possible landmark case decision dealing with the doctrine of Separation of Church and State.

The Founding Fathers had several different viewpoints regarding how religion and government should interact. The overarching concern was to not have a national religion due to the diverse religions present in the colonies. The Founders keenly looked to the history of the world regarding interaction of religion and government, realizing the possible issues. They did not want to take religious beliefs out of society; rather they opted to protect each entity from one another as much as possible. However, many aspects of the U.S. government were – and still are – founded in religion.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the treatment of religion by our government is broken into two clauses in the First Amendment: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment Clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit the establishment of a national religion by Congress or the preference by the U.S. government of one religion over another. This applies to all government actors, including all states under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The issue of law the seven Ohio justices may have to answer is whether the firing of eighth-grade public school science teacher John Freshwater for presenting religious doctrine in his science class violated the teacher’s free speech and freedom of religion under the First Amendment.

However, in order to understand the legal issue, the reverse has to be asked. Did John Freshwater, an eighth-grade public school science teacher, violate the Establishment Clause by teaching creationism in his classroom? Or, if you violated a workplace rule several times, would you lose your job?

The resounding answer is “yes,” you would lose your job and “no,” the school did not violate Freshwater’s rights by terminating him. First, Freshwater was acting as a public employee and his actions teaching creationism violated the Establishment Clause. Freshwater claims the school district violated his First Amendment rights and he had academic freedom to teach. The school district disagrees and counters, saying the Establishment Clause forbids government to endorse religion. The school had a duty not to violate the law.

According to the Mount Vernon school district, Freshwater’s speech was made pursuant to his duties as an employee for the school and the school had to ensure their employee did not violate the law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Garcetti that public employees have no free speech rights when they speak pursuant to their official duties. The Sixth Circuit ruled when teachers go to work, they act not as individuals, but rather as government employees.

In Freshwater’s case, he repeatedly taught religion in his classroom by invoking creationism and taught what he considered “gaps” in the curriculum. He filled the gaps by referring students to specific websites, providing handouts and Bibles in the classroom.

Second, Freshwater’s teaching methods were against the school’s policy and applicable academic content standards. Freshwater’s employer, the Mount Vernon school district, had specific policies regarding their curriculum and the teaching of controversial issues. Like with all jobs, if an employee does not follow the rules of their employment, eventually the employee loses their job. Being a public school teacher is no different. John Freshwater knew the rules and was warned several times not to continue his conduct in the classroom. Ultimately, he continued the conduct he believed in and was terminated for it.

As a Christian and a product of public schools, I personally would not have an issue with Freshwater’s approach. However, as someone who believes in the rule of law and the free markets, Freshwater’s actions cannot be condoned for many reasons. The simple answer in this case is Freshwater broke the rules and thus deserved to lose his job.

Rob Scott is a practicing attorney at Oldham & Deitering, LLC. Scott is the Chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party and the founder of the Dayton Tea Party. He can be contacted at rob@oldhamdeitering.com or www.gemcitylaw.com.

Commentary Forum, 5/15/12

Marianne Stanley — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:55:08 +0000

Bullying Starts at The Top

By Marianne Stanley

When things get this turned-around-upside-down-and-backwards, it’s time to stop for a while so that we can sit down and do some serious thinking about where we are and what got us here.

We jail the harmless in the form of pot smokers and peaceful protestors while allowing the criminal minds that rule some of our largest corporations and entities, from the banks to the pharmaceutical companies to law enforcement, to literally get away with theft, assault and even murder. Arrest, jail time for these purveyors of human misery? Never!

The message is clear, even to our nation’s kids: money is power and power is everything. Our kids see that ruthlessness seems to be a common trait of the powerful. They see it when banks rob people of their lifelong savings and throw them out of their homes dispassionately. They see it when pharmaceutical companies knowingly market deadly drugs for profit, as Merck did with Vioxx, a drug that has reputedly killed half a million of us in just five years. They see it when the coal and gas industries drill and frack our Earth’s heart out, polluting and destroying her ability to continue to provide for us. They see it when we put more non-threatening people in our jails than even Russia and China did at the height of their dictatorships. They see it when our once-docile and helpful police become commandos bearing shields and body armor against unarmed and peaceful Americans.

We market violent movies and video games to our kids, teaching them to kill quickly and without remorse in order to win the game. “Grand Theft Auto” makes a game out of stealing cars, shooting police and brutalizing women. Television is full of all sorts of twisted acts of violence and of using and abusing others for selfish reasons.

Belligerence rather than cooperation is the new norm. Coldness replaces empathy, compassion and fellow-feeling. Conscience has been run out of town on a rail as the Wild West shoot ‘em up mentality takes hold once again. Egotism has run amok. The guy with the biggest gun and the baddest attitude wins. Want a visible, perfect example? The guys in power in our government have money, so why worry about those who don’t? Policies that cost mainstream America its jobs, homes and Middle Class don’t hurt those at the top, so why worry? Acting for others, for the common good? Gone. As our own one-time VP candidate said, “Don’t retreat. Reload.” What is this but a call for even more uncivilized behavior and lack of human decency? And we fault our kids? Please!

Our TV and radio pundits have crafted nastiness and lies into high art. Their vitriol and uncontrolled rantings and ragings spill over into society at-large, modeling to youth a perfect example of how to reach new lows rather than exhilarating new highs as human beings. In the far-right reactionary camp, name-calling, hatefulness, judgment and intolerance have been normalized. Should we really be so surprised when our youth follow our lead?

What ever happened to the teaching and modeling of virtues and values? What has happened to self-control, manners, civility and self-discipline? Instead, we see and hear grown men throwing tantrums into their microphones or on camera as though it’s normal and perfectly acceptable. Well, it isn’t. It is hurting others, like Darnell Young and oh-so-many others in our schools and all over this land.

Shame seems to be a thing of the past … sadly. Now, more than ever, we need it as a fitting feeling after doing something mean, heartless and unwarranted towards our fellow man. Why did Darnell’s mother send him to school with a stun gun? Because no one responded to her ten prior pleas for help from the school to stop the assaults on her son.

Yes, Darnell violated school policy by bringing the stun gun. But didn’t the school first violate its anti-bullying policy and its duty to protect its students? Why has the school failed to take full responsibility for Darnell’s act of desperation? Again, it is a great example to kids of how easy it is to punish the weak and hurt, while letting the big and powerful off the hook completely. Focus is intentionally diverted from the “bad guys” to the victim. Darnell isn’t the one who should have been expelled; the bullies should have. But this is what we do when society is turned-around-upside-down-and-backwards. It’s time we see this … and then fix it.

Commentary Forum, 5/15/12

Ben Tomkins — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:52:21 +0000

The Right Power

By Ben Tomkins

Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to the case of Darnell Young. A 17-year-old boy walking the land as an abomination to the Lord! An evil boy who engaged in every manner of homosexuality, gayness, faggery and all things unchristian. For as it was written in the Bible by some random guy 2500 years ago, and therefore is literally applicable to the world in which we live today — the same way women should be sent to live in a tent outside of town when they’re on their period and men with crushed genitalia are going to hell — “A man shall not lie with another man. It is an abomination. – Leviticus 18:22” In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Can I get a right power?

“Right power.”

Now this young boy received his due punishment by the hand of his fellow classmates day after day after day. They beat him, abused him, insulted him, threw bottles and rocks at him — all because he committed the sin of being created a homosexual, ironically, by God. Can I get a smite power?

“Smite power.”

Ten times this young sinner’s mother appealed to the school administration to intervene, and yea, ten times they ignored her. For when a black boy is harassed and beaten at school in 2012, it is a hate crime of the first order, but when he’s a faggot you’re basically doing him a favor. For if one has not been successful praying away the gay, then the next best thing from a social and moral standpoint is to allow his classmates to slay away the gay through the administration’s blind, abject indifference to the situation. Can I get a slight power?

“Slight power.”

And I tell you, it was a kindness the administration and his schoolmates did for this young black faggot, though their means were harsh. For according to some crazy bitch in Lincoln, Nebraska, homosexuals molest school boys in order to give them AIDS and commit anal sex with their P-E-N-I-S in order to enjoy rupturing their partner’s intestines and killing them. Also, ass-licking causes sepsis, and gays enjoyed watching Christians mauled by lions in the coliseum because they’re sadistic. Can I get a fright power?

“Fright power.”

But, I say unto you, this young abomination to the Lord had a mother who loved him despite his queerity. Blind to the administration’s higher purpose of letting gangs of students beat the shit out of him every day, she decided to give him a non-lethal stun gun to protect himself. Oh, how weak are those of the rib of Adam! Of course, she could have sent him to a private school or home-schooled him, for as we all know, Ann Romney was a hard-working stay-at-home-mommy with a multi-million dollar husband and a full-time nanny to boot, and that situation is directly analogous to the life of a lower-middle-class black mother in Indianapolis. Can I get a flight power?

“Flight power.”

So finally, my children, you understand why we felt it was appropriate to expel him from school. For when a terrified 17-year-old has a state-mandated obligation to spend 6 hours a day in a virtual prison where he is abused, tormented and beaten, and he is then handed a stun gun by the only woman and authority figure in the world who loves him unconditionally, we must cast him out from among us! Sure, we could punish his mother as the adult in the picture, or realize that we have allowed the situation to spiral completely out of control and use this as an opportunity for serious intervention and dialogue in our community. Yes, we could acknowledge that bigotry-driven hate crimes perpetrated by students against students will push individuals and communities to extremes of survival, and moderate our reaction accordingly in an empathetic and progressive manner. At the very least we could attempt to punish the six kids who surrounded him and threatened to beat him up in a similar fashion. Can I get a might power?

“Might power.”

But nay! We must make an example of the wages of sin and ruin this poor boy’s life by expelling him from school. By piling our sins on a goat and whipping it out of town, it allows us to perpetuate our blind faith in something stupid written in a book thousands of years ago, and avoid thinking about our world in a more inclusive, loving and tolerant way.

Benjamin Tompkins is a violinist, teacher, journalist, and critically acclaimed composer currently living in Denver, Colo. He hates stupidity, and generally believes that the volume of one’s voice is inversely proportional to one’s knowledge of the issue.

Reach Ben Tomkins at BenTomkins@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Forum Center, 5/15/12

David H. Landon — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:47:44 +0000

Bullied Seventeen Year Old Expelled for Taking Stun Gun to School

People of normal sensibilities are offended by the boorish behavior of bullies. Watching someone being bullied invokes different responses from different people. The responses range from watching bullying tactics with a level of discomfort, but in silence, to a decision to intervene and stop the attack. Sociologists tell us that bullies have probably been bullied themselves, and thus at one point in time were probably the victim of such attacks. The preferred response to bullying therefore is education rather than one of a more direct and aggressive approach. Try telling that to a parent whose child is continuously bullied at school, especially when school authorities fail to address the problem. Parental instincts cry out for a solution to a child’s anguish.

That was the situation recently at an Indianapolis Arsenal Technical High School where an Indiana mother sent her gay son, seventeen year old Darnell “Dynasty” Young, to school with a stun gun to protect him against bullies. The teen now faces expulsion from school for the next year. His mother, Chelisa Grimes, says she would do it again. Grimes stated that she sent her son to school with the stun gun for his own safety. According to Grimes, she had complained to school officials on ten different occasions about the treatment her son was receiving at the hands of his fellow students. When she felt the school was not protecting Darnell, she felt that sending the stun gun was the only way to protect him. Grimes was reacting to the daily taunting as well as physical attacks with rocks and bottles that were thrown at her son.

Darnell carried the stun gun in his backpack for a few weeks without taking it out. On April 16, 2012 he was at school and had the stun gun in his backpack. At some point Darnell was surrounded by six students calling him names and threatening to beat him up. Young pulled the stun gun from his backpack. As a warning to the bullies to stop messing with him, he raised the stun gun in the air and set off an electric charge. Reportedly, the six bullies went scurrying. But his victory was short lived. The school authorities came down on Darnell and he was led away from school in handcuffs. At this point, no discipline against the six students who were threatening Darnell has been undertaken.

Chelisa Grimes believes her son was acting in self-defense and insists that she would send the stun gun with him again if she had to do it all over.

Forum Question of the Week:

If, indeed, the numerous cries of a mother about her bullied gay son went unanswered by his high school, should 17 year old Darnell Young be expelled for taking matters into his own hands by bringing a stun gun to school?

Forum Right, 3/20/12

Mark Luedtke — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:15:04 +0000

Teachers Aren’t the Problem

By Mark Luedtke

On the surface, Gov. Kasich’s plan to retest teachers in failing schools might seem like a good idea. Teachers should know their subjects, so why not retest those in failing schools, right? But that kind of superficial analysis, the kind that makes good sound bites, produces bad policy. Kasich is trying to make teachers into scapegoats for failing schools, but teachers aren’t the problem. The problem is the government’s power of coercion.

The fundamental flaws of government schools are that they are funded by money stolen from taxpayers under threat of violence and that students are forced to attend government schools under threat of violence. Nothing good can come from stealing money and forcing people around at the point of a gun. It can only produce a thoroughly corrupt system.

In addition, teachers are coerced into joining unions against their will. Just as the government exists to enrich our rulers at our expense, coercive unions exist to enrich union leaders and their political patrons at the expense of workers. Unions add another corrupting influence to our socialist school system.

We’ll never solve the problem of government schools until we understand the problem. Government schools do exactly what they are designed to do: tear families apart and supplant the family with the state in the minds of students. This makes them docile subjects, willing tax slaves and ready soldiers as adults. To this end, government schools intentionally mis-educate children about history, economics and the nature of the state. Teachers are forced to follow this corrupt curriculum. In addition they provide a socialist jobs program for coerced teachers and a reliable voting block for Democrats. Contrary to rhetoric, from the point of view of fat cat government officials and union bosses, government schools do an excellent job.

No matter how well trained and dedicated teachers are, and most teachers do a fantastic job under difficult circumstances, they can’t overcome the corrupt system they are forced to work in. The teachers who work in the worst schools have the toughest jobs, and those are the teachers threatened by Kasich’s retesting system.

Of course, not all teachers do a great job, but we have to ask how those teachers got hired in the first place. Because the government school system is corrupt. Parents wouldn’t intentionally hire unqualified teachers — only government does that — but if they accidentally did, they would quickly fire them.

Departments of Education are based on the preposterous idea that bureaucrats on school boards and in capitals know how to educate every individual child better than parents and teachers. That’s beyond absurd. Kasich’s retesting program strengthens that false proposition.

This retesting program also loots more money from taxpayers, making them poorer and less able to educate their own children. The Columbus Dispatch reports, “Statewide, more than 7,000 classroom teachers in 346 charter and traditional public schools would be affected by the provision if it applied this year.” Also, “Ohio uses the Praxis series of exams to test teachers’ knowledge of the subjects they teach. The cost per test ranges from $50 to more than $100, depending on the subject.” That’s at least $700,000 stolen from taxpayers to enrich the politicians and their cronies for a program that will soon be run by union bosses.

Asking the government to fix government schools is like asking the mafia to fix its protection racket. The government is the problem, not the solution. Government regimentation and coercion prevent parents and teachers from cooperating to meet the personal educational needs of each family. The solution to the problem of educating children is to abolish government interference in education to free parents and teachers to work together in a system of voluntary exchange to solve individual educational problems. This will dramatically lower the cost of education and increase the quality. It will also restore healthy families and healthy communities.

Mark Luedtke is an electrical engineer with a degree from the University of Cincinnati and currently works for a Dayton attorney. He can be reached at MarkLuedtke@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Forum Left. 3/20/12

Ben Tomkins — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:13:31 +0000

Ludicrously Obvious Facts We Don’t Want to Face

By Ben Tomkins

I am constantly amazed at the lengths to which people in this country will go to avoid dealing with an obvious but unpleasant reality.

Everyone in this country knows our elementary and high school students tend to underperform against other industrialized countries, particularly Asian countries. The reason for this is simple: rice and fish contain natural psychotropic chemicals which allow them to … just kidding. But the fact that the top five countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment results are consistently China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong naturally lends itself to jokes of this nature.

Of course, we as a country can blow smoke up our rear ends until the end of time about how awful it is that they push their students so hard and point to the subsequent high student suicide rate, but the bottom line is that they perform better on tests because students feel the incredible pressure the system and their society puts on them to perform.

Now we cut back to the United States. We’re the best country because “we are.” Naturally. We created Elvis and Pogs. We keep the world’s biggest nose on Lady Gaga so she can Hoover up more cocaine than any Brit rocker ever could. That’s what being #1 is all about. We also eat more than other people, and as a result we create more toilet paper than anyone else. Most of that food is consumed during the Super Bowl, which we always win.

And when it comes to education, we feel that it’s important to put systems in place that will motivate our students to perform as well as the Chinese, but we do it better. Our system is called: “Mass Cultural Delusion About Ludicrously Obvious Facts We Don’t Want To Face About Ourselves And Our Kids That Can Easily Be Blamed on Others.”

It works really, really well.

Springfield, OH recently instituted a fabulous new version of this system in which they will retest teachers who have to deal with the students most affected by poverty and social issues. The theory here, and it governs our entire education system, is that if your child sucks at math then teachers must be at fault. That’s what No Child Left Behind is all about. If your district underperforms, then they punish your school and teachers economically, thus making it even harder to perform well in the future. Of course, all this seems to have accomplished in recent years is to highlight things we already knew. Students in the Cleveland ghetto do really, really badly, and students in Worthington will be taking their tests on the way to Mars next year via satellite feed.

So why is punishing teachers worthless? Very simple. No teacher on earth can “make” kids do well in school. They couldn’t even do it when they were allowed to beat the hell out of a kid with a stick, much less now when they aren’t even allowed to take their phone. Therefore, we must find a way to incentivize those who do affect the outcome.

That would be the students, I’m afraid. Is it unfair to tell 12-year-olds that if they suck they will be responsible for the lost funding, cost teachers their jobs and injure their high-achieving classmates? Yup. There might even be a few soap parties in the barracks as a result, but unfortunately that’s our system. It’s no use deluding ourselves.

You know, I hear a lot about this generation being the entitlement generation. You know that’s not about the kids, right? It’s about the fact that parents are allowing themselves to blame others for their kids’ problems because it’s easier. Schools, teachers, Principals, whatever. Yes, we all want flowers and butterflies for our kids, but if we truly want great education, our students must be made to feel the pressure of failure. Otherwise, we’re just grasping at straws.

Forum Center, 3/20/12

Dayton City Paper — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:09:48 +0000

Teachers in Ohio’s Lowest Performing Schools Face Retesting

A provision in the Ohio budget will require thousands of teachers in Ohio’s lowest-performing schools to take new licensing tests for the first time. The testing would affect teachers in their core subject areas in any school whose performance has been ranked in the bottom 10 percent of Ohio schools. The rankings, which are based on Performance Index scores, were developed by the Department of Education The schools affected have been placed on Academic Watch or Academic Emergency based on those scores. The next Performance Index comes out in August.

The Performance Index score is a combination of students’ results in Ohio’s Achievement Assessments which test achievement in grades 3-8 and again in the 10th grade Ohio Graduation Test. Core subjects are reading, English language arts, math, science, foreign language, government, economics, fine arts, history and geography. The Performance Index will be used to rank Ohio’s 3,400 public schools, with the bottom 10 percent falling under the new testing requirement.

The Kasich administration has pushed for the new testing requirement in order to hold teachers more accountable for the results that students are achieving in Ohio’s under- performing public schools. The Governor has stated that he is concerned that Ohio is not adequately preparing its young people for the jobs of the future. He recently noted that nearly 40 percent of Ohio high school graduates entering college are required to take remedial course work. Kasich wants Ohio’s public schools to do a better job of preparing its students and he believes that the new testing for teachers in the lowest performing districts is one possible solution. Kasich views this testing requirement as a way to weed out teachers who are unable to teach their core subjects.

Critics of the testing requirement point out that the provision pins the success or failure of students in a particular school or district only on teachers. Many experts believe parents, the community and administrators also play a big part in students’ academic success. They also point out that the poorest districts most often are the ones falling in the bottom 10 percent on the Performance Index. The new testing ignores environmental factors, such as living in poverty, which can affect a student’s performance no matter how accomplished and effective the child’s teacher might happen to be. It is also less likely that good teachers will take teaching positions in a troubled district where no matter their skill at teaching or their knowledge of their subject, they will be subjected to retesting.

Many states, including Ohio, have already begun to adopt teacher evaluation systems. These systems will link student test performance to individual teacher reviews. School performance experts believe that such individual evaluations will be a more accurate measure of which teachers are ineffective. These evaluations would hold every teacher in the state of Ohio accountable, not only those teachers in schools in the bottom 10 percent.

Forum Question of the Week:

“Should Ohio teachers be put to the test with retesting?”

Commentary Forum Right, 2/7/12

Mark Luedtke — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:34:01 +0000

The Copyright Police State

by Mark Luedtke

For six months, many internet users were monitoring and informing everybody they could reach about SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) was a draconian House bill that would have given the feds terrible powers to attack the owners of websites ostensibly to combat piracy of copyrighted material. PIPA was the Senate version.

Despite this overwhelmingly negative response from the people, both bills, pushed by giant movie and record corporations, were smoothly sailing to become law. These plutocrats paid big money to Congress-crooks to purchase this legislation. Then a funny thing happened: internet giants revolted. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and dozens of other popular websites blacked themselves out, informed visitors of the dangers of SOPA and PIPA and provided contact information for Representatives. Concerned citizens crashed the email and phone services in the Capitol, and by the end of the day, both bills were dead. The upstart rebels feel flush with power after destroying the copyright Death Star.

But the empire will strike back. Government hates free speech for good reason. As Murray Rothbard explained in Anatomy of the State, “The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively ‘peaceful’ the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society … The State has never been created by a ‘social contract’; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. There are only two ways to obtain wealth; through production or predation. The government doesn’t want the people to realize it’s a predatory institution – a super-mafia – and can never be anything else.”

You can find Rothbard’s essay, others like it and entire books on economics and liberty for free at mises .org. This is unprecedented in history. Because the internet provides unlimited access to this kind of free information, governments have been working overtime to seize control over it since it was created. Last year the US Congress entertained multiple bills to seize control of the internet including one giving the president a kill switch to arbitrarily shut down the internet under the guise of national security. As Mac Salvo wrote, “SOPA was an attempt to put the power of information back in the hands of an elite few who are rapidly losing the ability to control what the masses are reading, hearing and seeing. Alternative news and ‘extremist’ information was the target (and still is).”

But even as the rebels were destroying the Death Star in Washington, the empire reached around the world to Hong Kong and New Zealand and snuffed out Megaupload Limited, claiming it was dedicated to copyright infringement, and arrested its owner. The data of customers of megaupload .com remains in limbo. This would be like the government shutting down a bank and seizing all the bank accounts because it claimed that criminals sometimes saved money there. Your money may or may not be lost.

This police state attack in the name of copyright enforcement was clearly intended as a threat. Government is using copyright as an excuse to shut down speech it doesn’t like and to intimidate internet companies. Government is god over corporations. It creates them, destroys them and raises them from the dead with the stroke of a pen. You can bet Google and Facebook will think twice before organizing their customers against government’s agenda again.

Corrupt Chris Dodd, the senator from Countrywide turned chief lobbyist for the Hollywood plutocrats, hinted at the empire ’s revenge, “It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [these sites] for information and use their services,” Dodd wrote. “It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.” Congress will force the executives of these companies into Congressional show trials to demonize them soon. Then the empire will pass something much like SOPA either quietly or in a fervor related to some phony national security concern.

But Americans shouldn’t be surprised that the government uses copyright to quash speech it doesn’t like. The purpose of copyright from its inception was to give governments control over information. Copyright is not a grant of rights as supporters pretend. It’s a grant of monopoly privilege that makes the producer’s profits beholden to the government. Copyright is a ban on everybody else from sharing information. The same is true for patents and all so-called intellectual property (IP). Government doesn’t fight monopolies. It creates them to control producers.

Copying is not stealing. If you took my bicycle, I wouldn’t have a bicycle anymore. That’s stealing. But if you copy my article, I still have my copy. That’s not stealing. Contrary to the assertion in the forum center, piracy doesn’t cost anything. IP costs consumers billions every year by transferring wealth from consumers to producers, and by hindering the exchange of ideas, impedes the advance of civilization. IP is corporate welfare for the purpose of corporate control.

People are using the internet to expose the fraud of government, and those predatory dinosaurs will do everything in their power to stop them. Fortunately smart people are designing a decentralized internet that can resist government control.

Mark Luedtke is an electrical engineer with a degree from the University of Cincinnati and currently works for a Dayton attorney. He can be reached at MarkLuedtke@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Commentary Forum Left, 2/7/12

Rana Odeh — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:31:52 +0000

Dire Straits for Entertainment: A Hollywood Fiction

By Rana Odeh

First, let me make it clear that I do not support any copyright infringements. SOPA and PIPA are not designed to protect intellectual property rights, creativity or artists. They are simply bad laws that jeopardize freedom of expression and the openness of the internet.

We are told by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that online file sharing costs the industry $5.5 billion a year. MPAA and RIAA have been fighting “piracy” for decades. Do you remember those high-tech piracy devices? The cassette and VHS tape recorders? They were supposed to destroy the entertainment industry in the ‘80s. Unfortunately for MPAA and RIAA, the U.S. congress passed the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) in 1992, which amended the U.S. copyright law and made it clear that teenagers copying a Madonna K-7 and sharing it with their friends does not constitute copyright infringement.

In 1998, however, the media industry was successful in getting congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which criminalized the devices and services designed to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted material, regardless of whether they result in any actual copyright infringement. The DMCA also increased the penalties for internet-based copyright infringements. However, what the DMCA did not do in 1998 is hold online service providers liable for copyright infringements by their users. Therefore, what we are debating today is essentially DMCA 2.0. This is yet another push by the media industry to introduce laws that criminalize all users and service providers without putting the burden of proof on MPAA and RIAA.

Let’s take a quick look at this supposedly “ailing” industry. According to a new study published last week by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the entertainment industry has grown by 50% in the last decade. The report titled “The Sky is Rising” by Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor64, provides extensive evidence to illustrate that the entertainment industry is experiencing a “true Renaissance era.” According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Masnick shows that consumer spending on entertainment as a percentage of their household income rose by 15% from 2000 to 2008. In the last decade, the entertainment sector employment also grew by 20% (43% of whom identified as independent artists).

According to the MPAA’s own data, box office revenues increased from $25.5 billion to $31.8 billion between 2006 and 2010 (a 25% increase). Financial audits of the industry also indicate that from 1998 to 2010 the value of the worldwide entertainment industry grew from $449 billion to $745 billion. Additionally, from 1999 to 2009 music concert sales in the U.S. tripled from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion. Does this sound like an industry in dire straits to you? This is a very bad Hollywood fiction. It is neither entertaining nor good for business. MPAA and RIAA need to stop whining about new technologies and put more of their energy and resources in developing better business models that are capable of adapting to new market realities.

The DMCA is more than enough to protect the entertainment industry and to enforce copyright laws. In fact, the recent attack on MegaUpload happened without PIPA and SOPA. However, the way the Department of Justice is handling it has gone beyond the DMCA by assuming that all MegaUpload users are committing copyright infringements and by compromising their personal data (personal files, family photos, etc.). This essentially amounts to destroying evidence and destroying the personal property of millions of innocent users. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

Government regulation must be specific, transparent, and enforceable. What SOPA and PIPA are asking for is blanket regulation to offer the entertainment industry an exclusive status that exceeds even national security standards.

We live in a new cultural era of interactive entertainment. Consumers are more than happy to pay $100 to see a great live event or $15 to watch a great movie in the theater, but are less likely to pay $20 to buy an album or a DVD to watch at home. The Netflix and iTunes business models are good examples for Hollywood to follow. The future of the entertainment industry does not lie in Washington DC, but rather in Silicon Valley. Hollywood will be better off following a Silicon Valley business model rather than a Wall Street business model. It is innovation and creativity that have always kept the entertainment industry so refreshing and attractive. Imposing such strict restrictions on the internet will only hurt the industry in the long run by alienating and criminalizing its innovation partners and its consumers.

Rana Odeh is a DCP Debate Forum freelance writer. She holds a BA in English and Philosophy from UD and is currently a graduate student in the ICP Program at Wright State University. Reach Rana at RanaOdeh@DaytonCityPaper.com or view her work at RanaOdeh.com.