I just happened across this passage from Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. It’s one of my favorites, so I thought I’d post it. The background is that Sir Thomas More, then Lord Chancellor of England, is arguing with his daughter’s suiter, Roper, as to whether to apprehend a government agent who is about to falsely inform on him.

More There is no law against that. (being false and evil)

Roper There is! God’s law!

More Then God can arrest him.

Roper Sophistication upon sophistication.

More No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s
legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

Roper Then you set man’s law above God’s!

More No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact – I’m not
God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such
plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But in the thickets of
the law, oh, there I’m a forrester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who
could follow me there, thank God….

Alice While you talk, he’s gone!

More And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the
law!

Roper So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get
after the Devil?

Roper I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round
on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This
country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not
God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it –
d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow
then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

“A Man for All Seasons” — Robert Bolt

This really gets at the issue of why it’s necessary to abide by and preserve the rule of law even where, in particular cases, it is unpopular or inexpedient or ineffective.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article on the truck seat belt bill, HB 1237, entitled Deal requiring truck seat belts goes to House. As I understood it, the major hang up between the House and Senate was whether to alter the local road funding formula. Should the money be doled out based on a county’s ratio of cars to the state’s total cars, or should it be doled out based on a county’s ratio of cars & trucks to the state’s total cars & trucks. The Senate version left it at the former while the House version contained the latter. So, just really, really generally – Senate version favors urban areas whereas the House version favors rural areas.

However, according to Ms. Kelly’s article the four conferees (conferees usually being made up representatives of both parties from each chamber) agreed on the Senate version with a small change. The change involves the extra federal money Indiana would receive if it finally eliminates the truck seat belt loophole. The conference committee version of the bill would prohibit using that extra money on safety checkpoints set up to catch Hoosiers without seat belts. The local road fund formula would remain cars only.

Strikes me as odd that the checkpoint language would be enough to get the thing passed. The legislators representing areas with more trucks seem likely to take the most heat from this legislation. Consequently, it seems like they would really like to bring home more money to their counties in return.

[tags]HB1237-2007, seat belts[/tags]

Bill No.: HB 1019 Digest: Criminal law matters.
Authors/Coauthors: Duncan, Summers
04/25/2007 H House reconsidered and concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 576: Yeas 91, Nays 0
This bill primarily has to do with the elements involved in deprivation of child custody crimes.
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Bill No.: HB 1092 Digest: Military service benefits.
Authors/Coauthors: Avery, Hinkle, Stilwell, Reske
04/25/2007 H House reconsidered and concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 577: Yeas 92, Nays 0
Mostly this bill imposes a requirement that employers allow family members of military personnel called to active duty up to 10 days of unpaid leave. However, there is also an interesting provision that forbids hotel and motel owners from refusing to rent a room to a person solely because the person is under 21 if that person is on active duty. I’m not so sure about that last one. I’m all for making sure military personnel aren’t denied lodging, but I think the reasons that make hotel owners reluctant to rent their property to young people between 18 and 21 are probably still equally valid concerns if we’re talking about a young soldier on leave from the Army. In my experience, those guys drink harder than just about anybody when given the opportunity.

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Bill No.: HB 1220 Digest: Adult protective services.
Authors/Coauthors: Hoy, Dickinson
04/25/2007 H House reconsidered and concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 579: Yeas 93, Nays 0
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Bill No.: HB 1278 Digest: Local government investment pool.
Authors/Coauthors: Austin, V. Smith
04/25/2007 H House concurred in Senate amendments; >
This bill allows local governments to deposit money with the State Treasurer for investment. Seems to maintain liquidity and conservative investments but presumably reduce administrative costs by pooling resources.
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Bill No.: HB 1287 Digest: Jury selection.
Authors/Coauthors: Richardson, Dvorak, Grubb, Koch
04/25/2007 H House concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 581: Yeas 89, Nays 2
Primarily appears to be a house keeping bill, re-organizing the jury selection codification. Also allows a county to use unencumbered money in its jury pay fund to improve the county’s jury system.
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Bill No.: HB 1348 Digest: Medicaid reimbursement for umbilical cord blood.
Authors/Coauthors: Welch, Koch, Battles, Turner
04/25/2007 H House reconsidered and concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 578: Yeas 89, Nays 0
Requires the office of Medicaid policy and planning to apply to the federal government for authorization to reimburse a health care provider under Medicaid for the collection of cord blood from a pregnant Medicaid recipient upon the birth of a newborn.
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Bill No.: HB 1557 Digest: Various financial institutions matters.
Authors/Coauthors: Burton, Bardon
04/25/2007 H House concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 583: Yeas 91, Nays 0
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Bill No.: HB 1739 Digest: Sale of handguns.
Authors/Coauthors: Pelath, Denbo, Murphy, Reske
04/25/2007 H House concurred in Senate amendments; Roll Call 582: Yeas 83, Nays 9
I tend to think of this as the Wolverines! bill. It eliminates the requirement that a handgun dealer, after selling a handgun to a purchaser, forward to the state police department a copy of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Form 4473 completed and signed by the purchaser. I believe it was the 4473 registry that the Cubans used to figure out which Coloradans had firearms. I suppose it’s beside the point to question why the heck you’re sending the Cubans to Colorado? Seems like some Siberian-trained, Afghanistan-hardened Soviets would be more appropriate.

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Bill No.: SB 286 Digest: Environmental crimes and infractions.
Authors/Coauthors: Kenley, Bray, Broden, Gard
04/25/2007 S Senate concurred in House amendments; Roll Call 465: Yeas 43, Nays 0
Among other things: Makes violations of certain environmental statutes or permits Class D felonies. Makes certain environmental crimes Class C felonies if the crimes result in the death of a person. Requires a court to consider any improper economic benefit received by a defendant, including unjust enrichment, in determining the level of fine to impose. Provides that a person who makes a material misstatement in an application for a permit or for certain forms of financial assistance commits a Class D felony. Makes poisoning a water supply or tampering with a water supply with intent to cause serious bodily injury a Class B felony.

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Bill No.: SB 506 Digest: Private investigator and security guard licensing.
Authors/Coauthors: Merritt, Wyss, Rogers
04/25/2007 S Senate concurred in House amendments; Roll Call 466: Yeas 40, Nays 0
Changes the detective license law to the private investigator firm license law and the security guard agency license law and also establishes: (1) the private investigator and security guard licensing board; and (2) requirements for security guard agency licensing.

I really enjoyed Matt Tully’s column on his interview of Ken Falk, director of the ACLU – Indiana entitled Surprisingly, my interview with evil went well.

Tully asks the hard questions, like:

• Why do you hate God?
• What’s the ACLU’s problem? All you folks ever do is complain.
• Instead of suing over this, shouldn’t you just get a life?
• Clearly you and everyone else at the ACLU are evil and will settle for nothing less than destroying the fabric of this great country. Right?
• Are you a communist?

Apparently these questions were taken from the comment section of the Indy Star’s bulletin board discussion of the license plate lawsuit.

Inmates take over New Castle prison.

Live footage here as of 3:40 p.m. today.

Inmates at the New Castle Correctional Facility took over part of the prison and set several fires this afternoon.

. . .

New Castle Mayor Tom Nipp said “a full-scale riot” erupted at about 1:45 p.m.

“Prisoners were trying to tear down some fence,” he told WISH-TV (Channel 8). “I do know that the exterior fence is electrically wired, so I doubt they were trying to tear that down.

“The police department has been fully mobilized. A perimeter has been established on the outside of the facility to assure that if anyone did manage to get over a fence there would still be security. And all due measures will be taken to maintain that security.”

The privately operated prison is outside New Castle’s city limits, but Nipp said the city’s entire police department had been mobilized, along with officers from nearby departments, paramedics and a fire crew.

Nipp said he did not know if the riot was related to the arrival last month of convicts from Arizona who are being housed at the prison.

The New Castle Correctional Facility which went private on January 1, 2006, has been touted by the Daniels administration as proof of its privatization model for correctional facilities. The Daniels Administration began contract negotiations to run the prison with GEO Group, Inc. in August 2005.

In March, the facility took in 1,200 inmates from Arizona which required the addition of 230 new employees. Last year, a similar deal to import inmates from California fell through. Of the California deal, Gov. Daniels said the $6 million value of the contract was “”pure profit,” as the state was to reap in cash but bear no expense in the deal.”

GEO, Inc., the private contractor was formerly known as Wackenhut, a company with a colorful history. With respect to private prisons, it has gotten in trouble in more than one state for its employees having sex with inmates. In Louisiana, the state had to take over a juvenile facility after the Department of Justice accused Wackenhut of subjecting its inmates to excessive abuse and neglect. It has been accused of diverting money for drug treatment programs and of having lax procedures for background checks. More recently, GEO, Inc. was accused of overcharging the state of Florida by $5 million. For a lot of additional accusations, the veracity of which I do not pretend to know, check out the GEO Group Rap Sheet.

Update Advance Indiana has some more recent details. The Governor regards this as a “relatively minor incident” and Arizona had already started putting brakes on the deal to ship its inmates over here because of “security concerns.”

The Lafayette Journal & Courier is reporting that Fred Phelps‘ Westboro Baptist Church will not be at the funeral of Cpl. Cody Putnam who died on April 12, 2007 serving our country in Iraq.

There had been previous reports that members of Pastor Phelps’ church would be protesting at the funeral. His church promotes the message that God is punishing soldiers with death for defending a country that protects gays and lesbians.

I’m guessing his presence will be missed in Lafayette about as much as that of a rabid dog.

Cpl. Putman’s mother, Pam Mow speaks for us all, I think:

When told the news that the protesters would not show up, Putman’s mother, Pam Mow, sarcastically said: “That just breaks my heart.”

The Indy Star has another installment on the precarious state of our health care system. Turns out, being uninsured isn’t just for poor people any more. Folks at around the median family income level — about $46,000 per year — are joining the ranks of the uninsured at a pretty fast clip. The Lafayette Journal and Courier has a similar article in today’s edition discussing, among other things, how insurance rates go up for the insured as the numbers of uninsured and Medicaid recipients grow. Medical providers end up treating many of these folks with some level of care provided at a loss and need to make up the costs elsewhere.

Money can stand up to populism in this country for a long, long time; but I get the feeling that a huge number of people are getting really, really angry about the state of health insurance in this country and I think politicians will eventually get the sense that Something Must Be Done. That’s a cause for hope and fear. Something actually does need to be done, but politicians simply reacting to populist fears usually doesn’t end well.

In any event, I’ve been over this before, but I take the position that, as a nation, we’re already paying for national health care coverage, we’re simply not getting it. There is massive amounts of waste in the system, with health insurer’s administrative costs — processing claims — representing something like 30% of the total, if I recall correctly. Meanwhile, similar costs for Medicare, if I recall correctly, represent less than 10% of the total. We are, apparently, subsidizing the advertising and R&D for pharmaceuticals — paying full (or more) freight on drugs while the drug companies sell the same drugs to other countries that are more hard-nosed in their negotiations with these companies.

It’s definitely true that Americans could do a better job on their own of keeping themselves healthy. But, just saying that as an excuse for doing nothing with our health care system doesn’t work. Perhaps, for starters, we could divert some of the corn subsidies that encourage production of high fructose corn syrup and use them to pay for parks, trails, green spaces, gym memberships, credits for healthy living, whatever. Just a random idea.

At the end of the day, we need to rationalize health care financing. We have a ton of money going to pay for opaque insurance policies used, in turn, to pay for services that are not on a transparent pricing schedule; assuming that coverage is not denied properly or improperly by the insurer. We also have a lot of money going to treat illnesses at emergency rooms that could have been better and more cheaply treated earlier or elsewhere had the patient had insurance or at least known what the actual cost was as opposed to the retail sticker price. And I wonder how many people keep themselves unemployed or underemployed so that they can maintain their public health care coverage.

[tags]healthcare[/tags]

The Perry County News has an entry on the continuing time zone saga down there. As readers may recall, the Perry County Commissioners adopted a resolution indicating a desire to be put on Eastern Time if the other southwestern counties are granted their petition to be moved to eastern time. I believe Perry County would be required to file a petition with the USDOT to initiate time zone proceedings for their county.

Also, with respect to the ongoing time zone hearings in the Southwestern counties, the USDOT asked Ice Miller — the firm representing the counties — to again provide additional information. A reader has informed me that the Ice Miller response has been submitted but that the submission has not yet been posted to the USDOT time zone docket. Obviously this makes it more difficult for Central Time proponents to double check the accuracy of the responses.

When I was a kid, I tried a few times to use the ‘I forgot’ defense with my parents. It didn’t work too often. So, I was fairly impressed when President Reagan used it with such great effect with respect to the Iran-Contra matter. Unlike the Great Communicator, however, neither I nor Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appear to have Alzheimers.

Gonzales is facing the Senate Judiciary Committee asking questions about whether eight United States Attorneys were fired for political reasons. For example, it has been suggested that the United States Attorney for New Mexico was fired because he would not pursue politically timed and motivated corruption charges shortly before the election there. The reverse seems to have happened in Wisconsin where a U.S. Attorney was retained after pursuing a political corruption charge against Georgia Thompson so baseless the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided more or less on the spot to release the accused from incarceration, calling the evidence against her “beyond thin.”

This is part and parcel of the Bush administration’s electoral strategy. As McClatchy News article puts it:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush’s popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

We heard echoes of this strategy in the state GOP’s successful efforts to pass strict Voter ID requirements for those voters who vote at the polls (not so much for absentee voters, as I recall) championed by Todd “blacks are Democratic Slaves” Rokita.

So back to Gonzales, caught with his hand in the political cookie jar, Gonzales had to explain some of this to the Senate. He went with the “I forgot” defense:

His performance clearly exasperated the committee members, who were angered as he invoked a faulty memory more than 50 times. Republicans did not hold back in going after one of their party’s own. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, went so far as to call for Mr. Gonzales to resign, a demand made by only one other senator, Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

I’m not so interested in Mr. Gonzales’s resignation. I don’t see that the Bush administration has any real interest in appointing competent people to important posts. There is nothing to be done, really, but ride this out and turn over as many of the rocks as possible so people at least know the depth of incompetence.