Last year, I promised: “Next year, I’m writing about prison rape.”

Close your eyes and think of America

It’s tax time, and as always, our thoughts here turn to the forcible penetration of our wallets and our privacy by a government in full tumescence, turgid and needy, far too large for its proper place in our lives.

Taxes are…

While Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” not everyone agrees that we’re getting our money’s worth, or even that the extraction is justified. “Taxes are theft!” they cry – if you don’t voluntarily pay, the government will use force – arrest, imprisonment, or just simple seizure – to make sure you do.

Of course, it’s not enough to say merely that taxes are theft – in some ways, taxation resembles a much more personal crime. Under our system, it’s not simply the extraction of property that our government seeks. All government do that, and have various ways to do so. But every April, our government compels its citizens not merely to pay, but to file. This filing involves the forced labor of millions of people, compiling information demanded by our government, figuring out complex forms and formulas, and confessing to the authorities virtually every type of activity we’ve been involved in during the previous year. Get married? Have a kid? Tell the feds. Move to a new state? Get dumped by your spouse? Tell the feds. Get an embarrassing STD and rack up a lot of medical bills? Uncle Sam wants to know. And Uncle Sam will make you tell – just ask Wesley Snipes.

In most relationships, if one party feels taken advantage of, they can simply leave – pack up, seek shelter elsewhere, even get a restraining order if one is necessary. But you can’t do that with your Uncle Sam. You’re trapped in that relationship just as surely as if Uncle had the top bunk in your cell. He can get a hold of you any time you like, and you can’t get out. (You can’t escape because U.S. citizens are subjects of the IRS no matter where in the world they live – and even renouncing your citizenship may not relieve you of your tax obligations to the federal government. )

Like a good cellmate, Uncle Sam will protect you from other threats in the prison yard, and may provide other signs of favor. But still, there is that price to be paid, whether you want to or not.

And don’t forget to look at the bright side: next time, it’s going to hurt worse.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

You’ve got a dirty little mind, don’t you?

As tax time approaches, we watch our government borrow more heavily than ever to soothe the economic chafing caused by, well, borrowing too much money, ultimately increasing the amount of money we’re going to have to send to Uncle Sugar next year at this time, some of you seem to be a bit upset.

And, a little twisted. (You freaks.)

Three years ago, I wrote “Getting the Switch,” an allegory about the cruelty our government foists upon us every April 15. Not so much the payments, but the paperwork. (Ok, the payments, too.) That’s become one of the most popular posts ever on this website.

The search results that have spawned from that entry are, to say the least, disturbing.

But willow-switch spankings were so 2006. In 2009, the new style is Boston Tea Party re-enactments. Anti-tax protesters around the country mail tea to their Congressional representatives (sometimes shutting down the offices in the process) and otherwise distribute tea in its most common commercially occurring form – the tea bag.

Which means, of course, that the current tax protests are now known as “teabagging.”

Tax time, it seems, brings out the hidden pervert in all of us, bringing our most aggressive perversions to the core: flogging with branches, forcing one’s genitalia in someone else’s face… apparently, we’re not only mad, we’re also, well, stimulated.

So next year, I’m writing about prison rape.

By now the entire world knows that Former Congressman Mark Foley sent sexually explicit email and instant messages to former Congressional pages. When he knew he was about to be exposed, he resigned and checked himself into rehab.

His once-promising career is over. His reputation is destroyed. He may even face criminal charges – although the criminal liability is murky at best. Few people, if any at all, would say his fate is unearned.

Foley’s congressional seat is now vacant. Although Foley has resigned and has no intention of staying in next month’s election, his name will remain on the ballot. The GOP has selected State Representative Joe Negron to run in Foley’s stead, but in order to vote for Negron, citizens of the 16th District will have to perforate the butterfly ballot next to Foley’s name instead.

Those of you paying attention will recall this ballot issue coming up eariler this year with the resignation of Tom DeLay. The election laws of Texas and Florida, and presumably other states as well, prevent candidates from taking thier names off the ballots even when they have completely withdrawn from the race weeks or even months before.

Historically, there may have been logistical reasons for this, modern electoral technology ought to allow much greater leeway for replacements in the new century. Substituting candidates ought to be possible until the last few weeks or even days prior to the campaign. Not only can we do this, we should do it. When a candidate drops out of the race, voters lose the opportunity to make a choice. In effect, they are deprived of their right to vote. When a substitute candidate steps up to replace his departed colleague, voters again have a real choice. But if they want to choose the new candidate instead of his opponent, and the new candidate’s name isn’t on the ballot, they again lose that right to select the person they deem best fit for office. Of course, many will rememeber the “secret” that voting for the drop-out will count as a vote for their new choice, but all too many won’t. They will come to vote for a particular candidate, not see his name on the ballot, and either vote for the wrong person or not at all. And if the dropout’s name is clouded by scandal, many voters will change their choices in the polling place even though if they had the right information about who was running they would vote their true preference.

We expect our voters to be informed about the ballots they cast. But that standard should be limited to name, party, issues, and other qualifications of the candidate. It’s unfair to make voters for Joe Negron first remember, overcome their revulsion, and then punch the ballot (or the touchscreen…) for Mark Foley, a known sexual predator. Voters shouldn’t be expected to navigate a secret code or overcome their disgust for a placeholder in order to vote their true preference. Current ballot laws require this, and in so doing, devlaue our votes and erode our democracy.

Torture works.

Thanks to ABC correspondent Brian Ross, we know that several high-level Al Qaeda members in U.S. custody broke down under expert interrogation – some lasting for mere seconds, none more than just over two minutes. In the process, they gave up valuable information leading to the arrest of several operative and the foiling of at least one major plot to blow up L.A.’s largest skyscraper. Thousands of lives were saved.

So torture, under the right circumstances, works.

This means we no longer have the luxury of refusing to torture our prisoners on grounds of mere efficacy. We can torture certain people, and in the process, win major victories in the war on terror. We can torture people, and avert future terror attacks of the same scope at 9/11. We can torture people, and in the process, save thousands and thousands of lives.

When you look at it like that, how can we not choose torture?

The bad news is that torture’s newly proven effectiveness almost compels us to use it as a tactic – not just in the context of national defense, but in almost any arena in which torture could bring about substantial societal gain.

Torture can protect us – and our children – from dreadful evils. Torture can stop child pornographers. Torture can stop the meth peddlers. Torture can stop rapists and murders. Why, torture might even stop the terrible threat of gay marriage.

It can stop everything except becoming the kind of country that is willing to torture people if the rewards are great enough.

Once we decide that yes, if the stakes are sufficiently high, torture is the kind of tool we should use, then to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, we already know what we are, we’re just haggling over the price.

It seems to me that we’re not quite the society that is willing to condemn torture no matter what the circumstances, no mater what the risks or rewards. After all, Jack Bauer is immensely popular for his willingness to do whatever it takes. How, then, can our society guarantee that torture is and should be the ultimate last result, to be used only when the need is truly extreme and only when we are willing to pay a great cost?

(To my fellow legal scholars who rush to interject the Bill of Rights, I say… oh really? When torture is used not as a penalty and outside the realm of the criminal justice system, what relevance do the Fifth, Eighth, and even the Fourteenth Amendment have? Call me a cynic, but when temptation looms, the law will not be our moral refuge.)

I put forth a modest proposal. Any torture conducted by the government must be authorized by a designated official whose primary purpose is to evaluate every potential need for the application of duress, and to decide whether or not it will be authorized. Then, if this official decides torture is necessary, then that same official subjects himself to the exact same treatment, of the same intensity and duration, as that meted out to the interrogation subject. The torture stops when either the official or the subject breaks. Any rogue agent using torture without authorization would also be subjected to whatever treatment was doled out to the interrogation subject.

Economists call this “incentive.” If the interrogation would truly save thousands of lives, then the government official who authorizes torture — knowing that he himself will have to outlast the interrogation subject under identical inhumane conditions — would be a hero. If the objective isn’t so important that one of our own wouldn’t undergo torture to achieve the desired outcome, then less severe – and less morally hazardous — methods might be used instead.

Such a policy not only limits the temptation to use torture at all, it limits the extent and intensity of the methods used to those least severe which still accomplish the objective. After all, who among us wouldn’t be willing to try a little sleep deprivation to save lives? But most of us would draw the line at bamboo under the fingernails, or being broken on the wheel. So this policy would provide self-enforcing limits on the use and misuse of torture. There’s also a certain moral appeal to scrutinizing the use of torture under the microscope of the Golden Rule.

If torture works, there will come a time when we will really need to use it. But if we ever want to make sure we never become the nation that feeds its enemies feet-first into the wood chipper, we need to have very strong reasons to hate torture even as we acknowledge that sometimes it may be needed.

Cross-posted at RedState.

Riding in a vehicle operated by anyone in the Kennedy clan continues to be a serious hazard to public safety and public morals. U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, son of the notoriously lethal driver Ted Kennedy, crashed into a barricade at the Capitol Building sometime around 3.a.m Thursday.

The two officials said officers at the scene reported seeing the car swerve before the crash and said Kennedy appeared intoxicated.

There was no indication from the sources that a sobriety test was given or that an arrest was made.

According to the Natioanl Public Radio report I heard this morning, police made an initial response to the scene, but were quickly replaced by higher-ranking members of the department. The ones who, apparently, gave him a ride home and didn’t bother to administer any kind of alcohol test despite the fact that Rep. Kennedy thought he was on his way to a vote at 3:00 a.m.

That’s impaired, baby, and in D.C., whether it’s drugs, booze, or an intern in your lap causing the impairment, that’s a criminal charge. The only possible reason I can think of for them letting him go was his implausible claim that he was “on his way to a vote.” Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution provides that :

[Members of Congress] shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same;

I do not believe that this would actually apply to a Congressman, impaired, driving into the Capitol at 3 a.m., but I’m not entirely familiar with the case law. On the other hand, the Capitol Police felt perfectly free to stop Rep. McKinney a few weeks ago on her way into the building, and look what happened in that case.

One thing is clear. If I or anyone reading this would have done the same thing, we’d have been the overnight guests of the Capitol Police. Ted Kennedy’s son, though, got a pass. And it stinks.

UPDATE: I’m hardly the only one to raise questions. The Captiol Police are investigating, and the officer’s union has questioned, whether any special treatment occurred and whether any additional charges should be filed. By Kennedy’s own admission, he was driving while impaired and I have a hard time imagining that, absent further special treatment, he will avoid charges of that nature.

Gentlemen, for those of you who aren’t afraid to take sloppy seconds off rocker Ritchie Sambora and think they can fill the very large, um, shoes of rocker Tommy Lee, take note: Heather Locklear is suddenly single.

Possible winning strategy: grab a guitar and learn to play Warrant’s Cherry Pie.

“Please note: You’re not allowed to call yourselves followers of a ‘religion of peace’ if you riot and make death threats over a political cartoon.”

Via The Shape of Days.

Recall my post the other day about “ink by the barrel“?

That post was more prescient than my football picks. Tiff’s story got picked up by the Consumerist, Instapundit, and Doc Searls.

She’s gotten more eyeballs in three days than I’ve gotten total since I started blogging more than six years ago. And 90% of those eyeballs will never use the offending ISP as a web host – not because of the service suspension, but because of the post-suspension jackassery about trademark law and trying to get her pulled from her new web host.

And as one might expect, the owner of the ISP still doesn’t understand that it’s not about gay porn, it’s about trying to silence opposing viewpoints by abuse of legal process. That’s why he’s been vilified by most of his former target market. Because information wants to be free, but some people still don’t get it.

Let’s just say… it got brung.

I missed watching this game for obvious reasons the other day, but allow me to utter a quiet “Geaux Tigers!” in honor of LSU’s thrashing of the Miami Hurricanes in the Peach Bowl.

Many of you, I’m sure, had to endure the sportscasters making witty comments about Louisiana’s hurricane revenge and other such nonsense. It would have been worth it just to see Miami get taken down so hard.

Since the old Perpetual Beta t-shirts are no longer in stock, you might want to use this shirt as a stand-in stocking stuffer:

I Beta-Tested Your Girlfriend

Especially charming for all your female friends.

(Points to Kotaku for the link.)