A few days ago I caught wind of an attempt by some environmental activists to have the EPA ban lead ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. I was trying to perform some actual research on the matter (was this for real, was the EPA really considering it, etc.) and kept getting distracted by the day-to-day stuff including – shockingly – work. Bottom line, not only was it for real, the EPA has apparently decided to do the smart thing and cancel the public commentary period they had opened. They have denied the petition.
The Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition filed by environmental activists seeking to ban lead in ammunition, saying such regulation is beyond the agency’s authority.
The agency’s decision, announced Friday shortly after FoxNews.com published its report on the issue, sided with hunters and fishermen who had argued that the such regulations weren’t allowed under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.
The TSCA specifically excepts a variety of substances and materials from the EPA’s regulatory powers, including ammunition. The TSCA, in other words, explicitly denies the EPA the authority to regulate ammo. The petition was a no-go on its face. The EPA, recognizing that the law explicitly prohibits it from applying the TSCA to ammunition, decided that a public comment period was a waste of its time and resources. Good call. They were also up front with the notification that no one at the EPA is suggesting that such authority be granted.
Now if we can just get them to be as reasonable about carbon dioxide.
August 28th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2nd Amendment, Environment, Law, Politics |
no comments
So telling people they can’t co-opt someone’s funeral to spew vile hatred and twist a virtual knife in the open wounds of grieving families is an infringement of free speech but arresting someone for praying the rosary outside an abortion clinic is perfectly fine?
“God Hates Fags” is protected speech but it’s an arrestable offense to utter “Our Father Who art in Heaven”?
August 16th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Human Interest, Law, Politics |
no comments
I first heard about the incident with the JetBlue flight attendant up in JFK on Monday when it happened. For those of you who missed it, flight attendant Steven Slater, fed up from his interaction with an irate passenger, announced his dissatisfaction over the cabin intercom, grabbed a beer from the galley, and then blew the emergency-evacuation slide to exit the plane. He was arrested and charged with felonies but has also managed to gain folk-hero status with thousands of people.
I spent a few years working in the airline industry with some of that being in direct customer service positions. I know full well that some passengers out there are clueless, classless people. (A businessman who spent 5 minutes screaming at me to “bring the f*&@ing plane back” after he had deliberately stepped away from the gate moments before departure time to make a phone call and the lady who ranted at me about our owing her an on-time departure – in the middle of a driving thunderstorm – are cases that come to mind.) And we’ve all had our fantasy moments thinking about grand “take this job and shove it” gestures that would leave astonished and humiliated bosses in our wake as we get away clean. What this idiot male stewardess did stepped way over the line and no one should be applauding him.
The issue that got the ball rolling was an irate passenger, remember? What was she mad about? Allowed to proceed to the gate with a carry-on bag, she was told at some point during the boarding process that they didn’t have room for the bag in the cabin. Now, I don’t know what was in the bag but it was clearly stuff she didn’t want to risk having miss the flight or get lost by ramp workers who are, these days, notorious for not giving too much of a damn when or whether the bags make it back to their owners. Maybe the bag was too big for the overhead bins, but more likely it was because there were already too many bags in the bins when the lady got on the plane. This is something I’ve had happen to me a few times in the last 6 months. The people who get the 1st or 2nd boarding groups are the guys walking on with the stuffed garment bag and the roll-on bag that’s 3 millimeters under the maximum size allowed. These guys always get their bags on board leaving those of us stuck in the last boarding group to deal with gate-checked bags. Those bags are supposed to be brought up to the jetway immediately. In this instance, “immediately” was apparently not as immediate as the passenger wanted. How fast was it, really? We don’t know. If the reports are true, however, she was cussing at Slater and I certainly don’t approve of that. Regardless, cussing isn’t inherently dangerous to someone and it’s certainly not illegal (outside of Michigan, I think.)
Slater decided this woman had given him all he could stand and so he decided to make a grand exit. Had he picked up the cabin microphone and said his piece, walked out the door and out of the airport, you could make the argument to me that what he did was cool. I might have considered that over the top, I might not. But that’s not where this ended. Slater grabbed a beer from the galley on his way out. That’s a beer he didn’t pay for nor was it his. There’s a word for that: theft. To those people lauding his actions, I have to ask: if he’d grabbed the beer from the cooler at the local 7-11 and walked out without paying, would you still be applauding? Or would you call him what he is, a shoplifter?
What he did next was far more dangerous and destructive than what’s being reported. He blew the evac slide on the side of the plane not attached to the jetway. (How do I know which slide? He was clearly up front where the passengers were deplaning because he was being berated by the woman awaiting her bag and you can’t blow the slide on a door that was already disarmed and open, which is the one the jetway would be attached to.) Now, just a quick note before I move to the really serious part. The evac slides are extremely expensive pieces of gear. They are made to never fail because when you need them, you need them to work correctly, instantly, every time. Engineering tolerances like that can be achieved but it ain’t cheap. They’re also not what you’d call reusable. Oh, I imagine they could be repacked but you should be thinking of them like you do your car’s air bags. Once they’ve been fired, they’re replaced completely. This clown just deployed one so he could have a happy slide off the airplane and that’s thousands of dollars in what amounts to vandalism done in an instant. We could also make the argument that he deliberately circumvented the airport’s security because once he hit the slide there was nothing standing between the passengers and the secure area of the ramp. It’s a minor point but it’s still there.
But the real issue with this is the danger he placed all of the ground team in while performing this stunt. JetBlue uses 2 aircraft types, the Airbus 320 and the Embraer 190. Both are twin engine jets roughly the same configuration as the well-known Boeing 737. The passenger door thresholds are about 10 feet above the ramp when the plane is on the ground, well above the normal plane of awareness of the average ramp worker who is generally far more concerned with the ground support gear (bag tugs, lavatory carts, etc.) and the engines of the aircraft around them. To have a door not associated with the normal ground ops suddenly pop open and a slide weighing hundreds of pounds deploy with thousands of pounds of pressure literally above their heads is a major issue. Prosecutors are making this exact point in their case:
Prosecutors said Slater’s actions could have been deadly if ground crew workers had been hit by the emergency slide, which deploys with a force of 3,000 pounds per square inch. Turman said Slater had opened the hatch and made sure no one was in the slide’s path before deploying it.
Turman is Slater’s lawyer. Typically, he’s shooting his mouth off without knowing what he’s talking about. Evac slides are attached to the bottom of the door and an anchor bar to the base of the slide is placed in attach points on the threshold of the galley floor to keep it firmly attached to the plane when in use. When this is done, the door is considered “armed.” The deployment method is for the crewmember to open the door without pulling that bar out of the attach points. When the door breaks the seal around the frame and moves just a bit, the expansion cartridge inflates the slide very quickly and with those thousands of pounds of pressure I mentioned before. That action literally throws the door the rest of the way open. Accidental deployments have been recorded where gate agents waiting on the other side of that door after having driven the jetway into position have been injured when the door literally slaps them back up the jetway. The key is this: in order to open the door safely, the slide must be disarmed. When the door is then opened, the slide is completely out of reach of the crew member because it’s hanging on the bottom of the door which is now laying flat along the outside of the plane. You cannot open the door first and then deploy the slide. That’s just not how the device is engineered. Slater opened that door with the slide armed, which means he absolutely did not “[open] the hatch and [make] sure no one was in the slide’s path” before the slide deployed.
Now, there’s a little 4-inch window in the door that’s used to determine if something is immediately outside the door before you open it. Slater and his lawyer might say they meant to say he looked out that window before deploying the slide. That window is used to check to see if there’s a jetway in place or, in an emergency, to determine whether you’re about to open the cabin door into a raging jetfuel fire. It’s got a massively-distorting fisheye effect when you’re looking through it, making it completely unsuitable to see whether there’s a ramp agent directly under the door.
Bottom line: Slater just popped that slide without a second thought for whomever he was putting in danger. Had there been someone there, they would – at best – have been severely injured. Likely killed. And Slater would have slid right over them on his way to his own personal Miller time. “Reckless” is the nicest thing you can call that. This man doesn’t deserve to be held up as some kind of working-stiff hero. He’s a thoughtless jerk, a clueless menace. He clearly felt he was too good to be yelled at by someone whose opinion he shouldn’t have given a crap about and that air of offended entitlement placed other JetBlue employees at risk. He’s guilty of the crimes he’s accused of and he should be convicted on that fact alone. After paying the fines to the Court and restitution to JetBlue, after attending the anger-management classes he clearly needs, perhaps we can trade his time in jail with time spent providing some kind of service to the community. I’m thinking roadway cleanup on the roads leading into the airport or perhaps tasking him with carrying any gate-checked baggage from the ramp up to the jetways.
August 11th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Aviation, Crime & Punishment, Human Interest |
2 comments
While the racism cards have been flying over the matter of so-called illegal immigration (emphasis on the illegal, light on the immigration) a more serious component of the issue has arisen, that of the concept of birthright citizenship. Under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” In practice, this has permitted illegals to automatically grant US citizenship to their newborns simply by making it across the border in time for the delivery. While there may be some question about whether this practice is widespread or even factors in to the timing decision of those illegals coming here, it is nonetheless true that it introduces a problem.
First, let’s get something right up onto the table. The United States is one of a small minority of countries that practice birthright citizenship, more properly termed jus soli (Latin for law of ground). The more common method of determining citizenship of a newborn is to confer upon the child the citizenship of the parents, called jus sanguinis. (In the case where the 2 parents are actually citizens of different countries, the child is usually considered to hold dual citizenship in both countries.) So, the method practiced by the United States is actually more permissive than is generally done in the rest of the world. That’s not a justification for or against, it’s merely the fact and it’s something everyone discussing this should keep in mind.
There have been efforts made to change how the US confers citizenship on those born here, most recently pushed into the news by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Both House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have said that this is a matter than deserves further study and debate. I agree. Critics of this kind of debate usually suggest that there really isn’t a problem here; that illegals don’t come here to have kids. (Usually after making suggestions that the idea of changing the law is racist, I might add.) They contend that while the child would benefit, the parents would get no benefit out of it until the child reaches 18 years of age and can then sponsor the parents for residency. This argument ignores the reality of what happens when illegals are arrested and detained today. These same people who wave off the notion that this is a problem are the loudest voices screaming about the deportation of illegals who have young, American-born kids in their homes.
We can’t separate the kids from their parents! What kind of monsters are you Republicans, anyway?!?
Illegals who make the dangerous trip busting our borders while pregnant are counting on that kind of reaction. The babies born here aren’t carrying the hope of a legal sponsorship for the parents, they’re carrying the hope of being an anchor our law enforcement agencies will lack the strength to dislodge. And let us be honest: the way the law is written today, we’re not talking about deporting the minor child of an illegal, we’re talking about deporting a fellow citizen, something our immigrations laws absolutely cannot do. We cannot deport the child. So crossing the border in time to give birth here means the illegal has our immigrations agents right where they want them. ICE can’t deport a citizen regardless of who he’s related to and our political system won’t allow them to separate the child from his Mom. This is way better than a legal sponsorship in 18 years. It’s a badge of immunity from immigrations actions right now.
This is an incentive regardless of how strong any of us might judge it to be and it’s something we can fix. Many countries that followed the same jus soli practice we do have modified their approach or gone to a jus sanguinis system entirely. As I understand it, the suggestion being made today is to modify our law such that a child born in the US or in a US territory is considered a US citizen only if at least 1 of his parents is a citizen or legal resident. Otherwise, the child gains the citizenship of his parents by whatever method that country has in force at the time. I fail to see how this would represent a burden for any legal resident of the United States and I think it would be a good change to the law.
Of course, this is no matter of simply passing a bill in Congress and getting it signed. This is a Constitutional Amendment, something of properly significant weight. Congress must pass the bill, by 2/3rds in both the Senate and the House. Then it must be ratified by 3/4ths of the State legislatures. Given the current environment in Congress, there’s no way this effort will ever move. After November it might be a different story and, considering the support that Arizona’s immigration enforcement law enjoys around the country, ratification by the States might not be the impossible move some think.
In any case, this is an issue that deserves some honest discussion.
August 8th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Immigration, Law, Politics |
no comments
When a private business selling a product has its product removed from the shelves of a given store over something printed on that product, is that censorship? And does that violate the 1st Amendment? A Tennessee-based newspaper apparently thinks so:
The Rutherford Reader, a family owned and operated business, runs feature columns of local interest, many of which lately have related to controversy surrounding a mosque being built in Rutherford County.
The columns didn’t sit well with at least one patron who complained to several companies that they amounted to hate speech after a guest columnist in April referred to Islam as “evil.” One month later, the Reader was dropped from Kroger grocery stores, and soon after from a local KFC.
Now the paper is threatening to sue, saying this is a blatant breach of its First Amendment rights.
Opinion columns are just that: opinions. Everyone’s got ‘em and, when it’s a newspaper I’m free to either read or pass by, I have the choice of whether or not to expose myself to those opinions. But if the store I shop in decides they don’t even want to carry the newspaper in question – effectively removing my choice of whether or not to read it – is that a 1st Amendment violation?
The answer to that is a big, black-letter-law no. Like all of the Constitution, the 1st Amendment is specifically a protection of a citizen’s right to free speech (freedom of religion, the press, and peaceable assembly, also, but let’s concentrate on the first) from government interference, and that’s all. It prohibits Congress and state legislatures from passing laws restricting my free speech and law enforcement agencies at all levels from interfering in my exercise of that right. It does not even address actions by other private entities and it hold no power whatsoever against them. I am under no obligation at all to bring any publication into my home or allow them to broadcast from my property.
This approach to handling their dispute with the local grocery stores and KFC is just wrong and I doubt strongly any judge will say otherwise. Those stores are completely within their rights to refuse to carry that newspaper and make it available to their customers. Please note that their customers are equally within their rights to decide that this decision by the stores is wrong and to refuse to spend money at those stores. That’s how free speech works. It’s now up to the stores to determine whether the customers staying with them for taking this action provide sufficient payoff to account for those who will leave on the basis of this incident.
However, the newspaper needs to find a different approach if they intend to pursue this. Their 1st Amendment rights have not be violated.
July 1st, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Law, Politics |
no comments
As I mentioned briefly when it was announced, the Supreme Court ruled this past Monday in the case of McDonald v. Chicago that the protections offered by the 2nd Amendment are, in fact, incorporated against state and local action much like the 1st Amendment. Even though it’s being widely touted that this ruling has overturned Chicago’s patently ridiculous total ban on handguns, the fact is that the matter has been remanded to the lower courts. The SCOTUS has basically told the lower courts that the citizens’ rights protected by the 2nd Amendment are… um… rights that state and city governments may not interfere with. Since the Chicago ban is virtually identical to the DC gun ban struck down in 2008, most of us who oppose such bans believe the lower courts will strike Chicago’s ban down as well. Chicago might even follow the lead of some localities after the Heller decision and remove the ban on their own.
However, considering Chicago Mayor Richard Daly’s attitude on the matter, it is also most likely that he and his cronies will attempt to have enacted a series of ludicrously difficult regulations designed to make it such a pain in the ass to actually register a handgun that (they hope) most people won’t bother. Or expensive enough that most won’t be able to afford it. This will require continued vigilance. Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox of the NRA wrote a statement regarding this latest decision and had some great points:
But, Supreme Court decisions have to lead to actual consequences or the whole premise of American constitutional authority collapses. Individual freedom must mean you can actually experience it. An incorporated freedom has to be a real freedom.
The intent of the founding fathers — and the Supreme Court — was to provide access. Words must have meaning.
The Supreme Court has now said the Second Amendment is an individual freedom for all. And that must have meaning. This decision must provide relief to law-abiding citizens who are deprived of their Second Amendment rights.
We are practical guys. We don’t want to win on philosophy and lose on freedom. The end question is, can law-abiding men and women go out and buy and own a firearm? Today the Supreme Court said yes – anywhere they live!
This decision cannot lead to different measures of freedom, depending on what part of the country you live in. City by city, person by person, this decision must be more than a philosophical victory. An individual right is no right at all if individuals can’t access it. Proof of Heller and McDonald will be law abiding citizens, one by one, purchasing and owning firearms.
There is absolutely no rational justification that demands the protections of the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments be held as effective against state and local action yet denies the protections of the 2nd. A right is only a right when it is recognized as action that citizens may perform and governments may not stop. And a right is not something someone needs to buy into, either. My ability to speak my mind on the street corner should not be dependent on whether I can pay someone a fee. My right to be free of illegal search should not depend on whether I can afford to pay a certain sum to the police to keep them from entering my home without cause. Laws governing the ownership of firearms cannot present a similar obstacle. DC has gone that route after the Heller decision and has had to change their laws a few times when they were challenged. They are being challenged again and, given the McDonald decision, it’s not looking good for them. Nor should it.
This decision was a fine moment in American history and it certainly something to be celebrated. But it’s something to be watched, as well, to make certain the government actions on the matter comply with the protections the Constitution confers.
June 30th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2nd Amendment, Law, Politics, Virginia Politics |
2 comments
I just saw from a couple of sources that the Supreme Court has just ruled in the case of McDonald v. Chicago that the 2nd Amendment protections of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms applies to state and local government action as well as federal. I am walking into an important meeting at the moment and will write more on this later but I had to get this word out as quickly and widely as I could.
Outstanding!
June 28th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
2nd Amendment, Law, Politics, Virginia Politics |
2 comments
The Constitution directs the federal government to undertake a census of the population of the United States every 10 years and does so for a very specific purpose: to determine the number of representatives in the House that each state shall have seated. To deliberately skew that census count is to over- or under-represent citizens from a given state. An investigation has revealed that 2 managers of a Census Bureau in New York have literally made up responses for 10,000 households in their assigned area in order to meet deadlines they were going to blow past.
Two Census Bureau managers from a Brooklyn field office were fired after their bosses found they faked household surveys to meet deadlines, the Daily News learned.
Instead of pounding the pavement and knocking on doors, the corner-cutting people-counters mined the phone book and Internet to make up answers to questionnaires, regional director Tony Farthing said.
The managers – turned in by whistleblower employees – were caught last week. Now, at least 10,000 surveys need to be done or redone, officials said.
That’s at least 10,000 households misreported. People might be counted as residents of New York when they are no longer living there – or living at all – or the count might be under-reported because they only counted, say, 1 person living at an address when a family of 5 lives there now. These 2 clowns have taken it upon themselves to skew the representation of the State of New York in Congress because they were unable to get the job done in the time allotted. If that’s not a felony, it should be. Either way, these 2 should be barred from ever working for the federal government for as long they live.
June 26th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Crime & Punishment, Human Interest, Politics |
no comments
You might have heard about the Jones Act during discussions of the Gulf oil spill. In layman’s terms, it prohibits foreign-crewed or foreign-built ships from participating in domestic operations in US waters. By that I mean that a French ship, for example, couldn’t work a contract to pick up cargo in Boston and deliver it to Miami. That ship can take cargo from France to Boston, certainly, and then carry a load back out to Spain, for instance, but not from one domestic port to another in the US.
In the context of the Gulf crisis, the Jones Act basically prevents foreign-built or crewed skimmer ships from operating in assistance of the clean-up efforts. Calls are going out to either waive the act for the duration of the clean-up or to repeal the act all together. Brian Schoeneman over at Common Sense writes on the topic here. The issue isn’t as cut-and-dry as some are making it out to be and it’s a good thing to be conversant in all sides of the argument. Brian’s article is a good step in that direction and I recommend it. I’m just starting to engage on the matter now, so I’ll write more on it as I form up the thoughts.
June 26th, 2010
Posted by
ricjames |
Law, Politics |
no comments
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