A few weeks ago at the Ethics Alarms blog, Jack Marshall published his list of 24 ways people justify unethical behavior. He starts the list with an old rationalization that is the basis for several others:

1. The Golden Rationalization, or "Everybody does it"

This rationalization has been used to excuse ethical misconduct since the beginning of civilization. It is based on the flawed assumption that the ethical nature of an act is somehow improved by the number of people who do it, and if "everybody does it," then it is implicitly all right for you to do it as well: cheat on tests, commit adultery, lie under oath, use illegal drugs, persecute Jews, lynch blacks. Of course, people who use this "reasoning" usually don't believe that what they are doing is right because "everybody does it." They usually are arguing that they shouldn't be singled out for condemnation if "everybody else" isn't.

Since most people will admit that principles of right and wrong are not determined by polls, those who try to use this fallacy are really admitting misconduct. The simple answer to them is that even assuming they are correct, when more people engage in an action that is admittedly unethical, more harm results. An individual is still responsible for his or her part of the harm.

If someone really is making the argument that an action is no longer unethical because so many people do it, then that person is either in dire need of ethical instruction, or an idiot.

Despite Jack's warning in the last paragraph, I'd like to write a few posts about situations where "everybody does it" is a actually a pretty good argument. I'll let you decide whether I'm in need of ethical instruction or if I'm just an idiot.

I'll start with the most obvious example: I don't think anyone in this country doubts that driving on the left-hand side of a two-way road is unethical. First and foremost, it creates an immediate and potentially deadly hazard to oncoming traffic. Second, even if there's no traffic, driving on the left side increases the possibility that a pedestrian will get hit because he or she was looking the other way. It's so dangerous that I think we can safely say that only drunks and maniacs drive on the left-hand side of the road.

Or Englishmen. At least while they are in England, because everyone there drives on the left-hand side of the road.

I'm not sure how people ended up driving on different sides of the road in different countries -- the best explantions I've heard have something to do with differences in the types of wagons pulled by horse-drawn teams -- but whatever the reason, once one side began to dominate common practice, it would have been a huge gain in safety and efficiency to require everybody to drive on that side.

In other words, it's the right thing to do because everybody does it.

(Arguably, the ethical rule is not "drive on the left side of the road" but rather "drive on the agreed-upon side of the road." Driving on the other side is unethical not because there's something bad about that side, but because it violates our common agreement about how to drive safely. That common agreement is exactly the sort of consensus ethical rule I'm talking about when I say that "everybody does it" can be a good justification.)

For another example, in the condo building where I live, except for the occasional party, I never hear the sounds of my neighbors' lives. It would be rude for any of us to play lound music or crank up the television. If was a persistent problem, it would be cause for a complaint to the board.

This is very different from when I lived in a college dormitory, and everyone played loud musing all day and late into the night. It's not that my college dorm mates were any less ethical than my condo neighbors. They were just younger and in college. Tolerating their neighbor's loud music was a small price to pay for being able to play their own loud music. If anyone had complained, he would have been the one behaving rudely.

It was a case of different cultures, different rules. When the rules are defined in terms of cultural norms, then "everybody does it" isn't just an excuse, it's the way the rules are made.

It's important to note that cultural norms variation of "everybody does it" only works when everybody involved is a willing participant in the culture. It's no excuse for cultural practices such as gay bashing, slavery, or burning the heretics.

A couple of days ago, I posted about this silly graph, which shows the wage gap between men and women:

The dotted gray line on the graph at first seems to show that "Women's Wages as a Percentage of Men's Wages" are dropping, but that turns out to be because the dotted gray line is plotted against the right-hand scale, which is printed upside down, with the larger numbers at the bottom. I called this a sin against graph design.

My co-blogger Ken suggested in a comment that this might not be such a terrible sin:

I often run into a graph like that where the right-hand scale is reversed when reading scientific papers. It's often used to emphasize a reduction such as this one. The graph clearly shows an overall reduction in the gap between wages and demonstrates the variations by time.

It's actually a good graph, but fails to make the point James Park was trying to make. The question is if James Park created the graph with the intention of deceiving, or just copied the graph from an analysis done that Park failed to understand.

A little research indicates it was the second option. The graph appears to be Figure 8 from the report "Women and the Economy 2010: 25 Years of Progress But Challenges Remain" dated August 2010, which appears on the "Women and the Economy 2010 Series" website. The report is credited to "the Majority Staff of the Joint Economic Committee" of the United States Congress.

So, it's your tax dollars at work. I imagine James Park probably just took the graph from that report without worrying too much about the details. After all, it's from Congress, right?

In any case, it's still a bad way to show data. I realize that data sometimes has to be massaged to show results--such as plotting data against a reciprocol or logarithmic scale--but inverting the scale like this just seems wrong, especially since you could just as easily plotted the size of the gap itself, which really would slant downward on a normally-oriented scale.

I suppose one possibility is that for some historical reason wage differential graphs are always presented in this format. That sort of thing sometimes happens. For example, the traditional way to draw supply and demand curves in economics is to put price on the vertical scale and demand on the horizontal scale, which swaps the dependent and independent variables from the usual scientific practice. However, since it was an economist's blog that first brought his to my attention, this seems unlikely.

If you know anything about graphic presentation of data, especially if you've read Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information, you know that there are lots of ways to cheat to make the data appear to support your argument more than it really does. But James Parks at the AFL-CIO Now Blog has a post about the need to close the wage gap between men and women which goes beyond mere graphic cheating. This graph is a sin:

A quick glance shows that men's and women's wages are graphed against the left-hand scale. As you can see, both show a slight rising trend in constant dollars. The gray dashed line shows women's wages as a percentage of men's wages, and it's declining, which seems to show a loss of parity for women. This is odd, because the colored wage lines above are visibly getting closer together. Also, we may not be living in a paradise of equality, but does anyone who's been paying attention for the last 25 years really think things have gotten worse for women?

The explanation for this mystery becomes apparent when you realize that the gray line showing women's wages is plotted against the right-hand scale, which is printed upside down. Women's wages are in fact rising slightly faster than men's wages, so if the scale was printed correctly, the graph would be slanting up. Unless you resort to outright fabrication, data presentation doesn't get more deceptive than this.

[Update: More here, including James Park's apparent source for that misleading graph.]

(Note: Such a broad-based comparison between men and women is nearly useless anyway, even if printed correctly, unless you control for things like age, education, the type of job, and years of experience.)

(Hat tip: Steve Landsburg)

Some of the lawyers on my blogroll have been poking fun at a guy named Jack Marshall. He calls himself an "ethicist," runs a consulting firm called ProEthics, and has a blog called Ethics Alarms. I don't really know anything about him, but I thought his blog might make a good source of stuff for me to write about.

For the most part, his blog turns out to be about ethical situations I don't find interesting -- baseball, politics, frivolous lawsuits -- but then I found one from a few days ago that I can work with:

Ethics Pop Quiz: "What's Unethical About Auctioning Intern Positions?"

Are you ready to exercise those ethics brain cells?

The News Alert blog is reporting that the Huffington Post auctioned off an intern position for $9000, and another internship--three weeks of it with Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, and three weeks with hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons -- was auctioned off for $85,000, to benefit Simmons's charity, Rush Philanthropic.

Question: Is there anything unethical about this, and if so, what?

My answer will not surprise my regular readers: No, there is nothing unethical about this. Neither the organizations providing the internships nor the people bidding for them are being coerced. The transaction would not have gone through unless all parties found it acceptable. Since everyone involved likes the outcome, there's no ethical objection.

Marshall, however, sees a problem:

Answer: It is unethical to have interns do substantive work without paying them, and it is more unethical to make them pay for the privilege of being exploited.

How did HuffPo or Virgin make people pay? It's hard to imagine a more voluntary market activity than casting bids in an auction.

When a for-profit organization allows an intern to work without compensation, it is 1) taking advantage of workers desperate for experience, 2) skirting the minimum wage laws, and frequently 3) using unpaid interns to take a job that an unemployed worker could fill.

Wow. That single sentence has an amazing amount of muddled thinking. Start with the qualifier "for-profit." None of the issues he mentions in the rest of the sentence depend on the for-profit or non-profit status of the organization. Marshall is saying these interns are being exploited, but by singling out for-profit organizations, he's implying that it's okay for non-profit organizations to exploit people. I suspect he thinks there's nothing wrong with non-profit organizations accepting volunteers, and he's trying to hand-wave the distinction.

The first issues he raises, "taking advantage of workers desperate for experience," is probably the strongest one, in the sense that not paying people for productive work seems exploitive to a lot of people. However, the fact that people have volunteered for these positions, and even paid for them, implies that they must believe they are getting something valuable in return. I think "taking advantage of workers desperate for experience" is probably better read as "providing experience to people desperate to acquire it."

The second issue, "skirting the minimum wage laws," is a mind-boggling muddle all by itself. First of all, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're skirting the laws, aren't you obeying them? Second, the minimum wage laws have the same logical form as the ethical issue itself, so appealing to them is a form of begging the question. Third, it implicitly assumes that anything illegal is also unethical, which seems to make it impossible to ever change the law.

The third issue, "using unpaid interns to take a job that an unemployed worker could fill," is the silliest of them all. What possible change could we make to the intern's terms of employment that would not take a job that an unemployed worker could fill? Even if the company paid their interns 10 million dollars per hour, the other guy would still be out of a job. And if we give the intern's job to the other guy, doesn't that leave the intern unemployed?

If the internship has no real educational value and consists of medial tasks, it's unfair to the intern for that reason too.

If the internship has no real educational value and consists of menial tasks, don't you think the intern would quit? I'm sure people wanted these internships because they expected to get something out of them.

The fact that someone agrees to be mistreated doesn't relieve a person or an organization from the ethical obligation not to mistreat them. Just because you know you can get someone to work for unfair compensation doesn't make the compensation fair.

I'm not sure why you need a concept of "fair" beyond the fact that people are willing to work for it. To put it another way, if the people who accept the compensation think it's fair enough for them, who are we to question their judgement?

Auctioning off the exploitive internship to the highest bidder just compounds the unfairness. The interns are now being chosen according to financial means rather than merit. Whether or not the money goes to charity, this is ethically indistinguishable from a bribe or a kickback.  "Okay: we have ten good candidates for this internship. Who's willing to pay the most for it? Cash only!" This method of choosing interns would be unethical for paid internships.

What makes bribes unethical is that the person receiving the bribe is dishonoring a duty. A facilities manager who picks a roofing contractor because he got a kickback is betraying the interests of his employer in finding a good roofer, and a building inspector who overlooks faulty wiring because of a bribe is betraying the city that pays him to keep buildings safe. In the case of the auctioned internships, no one is being betrayed. A professional ethicist should be able to spot a distinction like this.

I imagine that spending time at a major media organization or hanging out with captains of industry is a pretty educational experience. I'm sure plenty of people are willing to pay for those experiences. If there's an ethics issue here, it's not that people paid for internships, it's whether or not they got good value for their money...which is the same question we have about any purchase.

This is priceless:

Dear Professor Lessig:

I have been informed that you are having former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer speak on ethics this Thursday November 12, 2009. This sounds fascinating and I would love to attend but the restrictions of my probation won't allow me to travel out side New York City.

For nearly 5 years, I supplied Mr. Spitzer with high priced escorts while he was both Attorney General and Governor.  For this crime, I served four months on Rikers Island, had all of my assets confiscated and am now considered a sex offender on 5 years probation. Mr. Spitzer broke both state and federal laws and walked away free.

I am greatly intrigued as to what Mr. Spitzer could contribute to an ethical discussion when as Chief Executive Law Enforcement Officer of NY he broke numerous laws for which he has yet to be punished. As Attorney General he went around arresting and making examples out of the same escort agencies he was frequenting.

That's Manhatten madam Kristin Davis, who has a few questions for the former Governor, such as:

3. Is it ethical for you to tip off your favorite escort service days before a bust so that they may disappear?

4. Is it ethical to try to book an assignation with a escort under a fake name after you were banned by my agency for being abusive to women?

I'm guessing he won't have a lot of answers.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

... and a look back at how to solve the problem of the armed village idiot...

There's folks who say (I'm one of them) that the MCPPA is one of the best carry permit laws in the country.  They -- we -- have a point. 

Quick digression:  I'm occasionally praised for being one of the folks who helped write the law.  That's flattering, but it's not true; I've learned a fair amount about how to draft legislation since, and do have some future plans to help write some in the future, but, just to keep the record straight:  I had no hand at all in authoring the bill.

(In fact, because I was involved in writing the book at the time that the law was being negotiated and drafted, Joe Olson and I made the decision that, for ethical reasons, I was to be kept out of the loop on the discussions, so as not to unfairly disadvantage a -- hypothetical and nonexistent, as it turned out -- competitor.  In retrospect, I think we bent over too far backwards, but . . .)

While the main author of the bill was Lynda Boudreau, then a member of the MN House, most of the language was drafted by Joseph Olson and David Gross.  It's hard to overstate the importance of Joe in the modern Second Amendment movement, so rather than get into it, just take my word for it:  he's one of the giants.  It's easy to understate the importance of David's contributions; David does it all the time.  While Joe had a lot of trial experience in his younger days, he's mainly been an academic for some decades, now; David's experience in the trenches -- and the lessons learned from that experience -- was critical.

One of the problems facing anybody crafting a carry law is this:  who should and shouldn't get a permit?  One view -- and it's mine -- is that the Second Amendment simply recognizes a right, and that there should be no need for permits at all; we don't, after all, have to get a religion permit in order to be able to fast on Yom Kipper, attend High Mass, or head over to D'Amico to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster by consuming the traditional zuppa de clams, after all.

But, as a practical matter, that wasn't what was going to happen in Minnesota in 2003 -- or probably ever.

Another view -- which I reject -- is that carrying a handgun for personal protection is a great privilege, which only the most special people should be allowed to have.

The MCPPA strikes a balance.  As a matter of presumption, just about anybody who is legally entitled to possess a firearm at all, and who has gotten what can be comically minimal training in the safe use of a pistol --

Training may be demonstrated by ... completion of a firearms safety or training course providing basic training in the safe use of a pistol...  

(b) Basic training must include:

(1) instruction in the fundamentals of pistol use;

(2) successful completion of an actual shooting qualification exercise; and

(3) instruction in the fundamental legal aspects of pistol possession, carry, and use, including self-defense and the restrictions on the use of deadly force.

-- gets a permit within thirty days of applying. 

But, you might say, what do you do about the borderline cases?  Let's say you have some raving nutcase who is able to get through a minimal carry class, and who hasn't gotten in such serious legal trouble that he's forbidden from so much as possessing a firearm, even under supervision -- are you saying that he gets to wander around with a loaded handgun, until he commits a felony?   

Good question; I'm glad I asked it.   

One simple solution would be to give some governmental authority -- the local sheriff, say -- the right to decide that some applicant was just too dangerous and nutty to be wandering around in public with a loaded gun.  And that would have some benefit to it, sure.  But it would also have some risks:  what do you do about a sheriff who goes beyond that?  Historically, in Minnesota and everywhere else, anytime you give some politician or government official any power at all, some are going to abuse it.

And there was a real history of permit denial abuse in Minnesota.  The Richfield police chief famously said that, as far as he was concerned, if you're running down the street being chased by an axe murderer, you shouldn't be able to have a gun to defend yourself.  (No, I'm not making that up.)

Which is why the MCPPA provides both authority to the sheriff, and a check on it.

(a) The sheriff must, within 30 days after the date of receipt of the application packet described in subdivision 3:... (1) issue the permit to carry [or] ... (3) deny the application on the grounds that there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit.

Hmmm... so the sheriff can deny a permit to a known knutcase, even if he isn't legally barred from handgun possession. But what, you ask, is to stop the sheriff from just denying it to, well, everybody?  Yeah, sure, somebody can take him to court, but that gets expensive.

And here's where Joe and David were stone fucking brilliant; I'm going to quote the whole subdivision, adding some emphasis:

Subd. 12.Hearing upon denial or revocation.

(a) Any person aggrieved by denial or revocation of a permit to carry may appeal by petition to the district court having jurisdiction over the county or municipality where the application was submitted. The petition must list the sheriff as the respondent. The district court must hold a hearing at the earliest practicable date and in any event no later than 60 days following the filing of the petition for review. The court may not grant or deny any relief before the completion of the hearing. The record of the hearing must be sealed. The matter must be heard de novo without a jury.

(b) The court must issue written findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the issues submitted by the parties. The court must issue its writ of mandamus directing that the permit be issued and order other appropriate relief unless the sheriff establishes by clear and convincing evidence:

(1) that the applicant is disqualified under the criteria described in subdivision 2, paragraph (b); or

(2) that there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit. Incidents of alleged criminal misconduct that are not investigated and documented may not be considered.

(c) If an applicant is denied a permit on the grounds that the applicant is listed in the criminal gang investigative data system under section 299C.091, the person may challenge the denial, after disclosure under court supervision of the reason for that listing, based on grounds that the person:

(1) was erroneously identified as a person in the data system;

(2) was improperly included in the data system according to the criteria outlined in section 299C.091, subdivision 2, paragraph (b); or

(3) has demonstrably withdrawn from the activities and associations that led to inclusion in the data system.

(d) If the court grants a petition brought under paragraph (a), the court must award the applicant or permit holder reasonable costs and expenses including attorney fees.

That last paragraph isn't just unusual in carry laws; it's unique.  And it provides a good, albeit imperfect, check on bad judgment or bad faith by the sheriff:  while the denied applicant does have to come up with some money -- usually around $3000 -- for a lawyer, if he wins, the court must order the sheriff to pay him back.

Nobody's perfect, not even -- maybe particularly not -- guys with badges. And it works both ways to correct errors.

Let's take a perhaps not entirely hypothetical case.  Some guy with a history of relatively minor brushes with the law -- interfering with a 911 call, a couple of disorderly conducts and two DWIs, say, manages to get through some sort of carry class at local gun shop -- and applies for a permit.  Looking at the application and his criminal history, the deputy says something like, well, Josh hasn't been in trouble again for a few years; maybe he's gotten his act together -- let's just cut the guy a break, and issues the permit.

Well, maybe it was the right call at the time; maybe not.  But let's say that this perhaps hypothetical guy goes on to pick up another DWI, a third and then a fourth disorderly conduct conviction, and tops it off with a 5th degree assault when he peppersprays a customer at his security guard job, and spends thirty days in jail.  

Is the sheriff out of luck just because none of those are felonies?

Not at all.  Look at the law, again, specifically Subd. 4 (c):

The sheriff must conduct a background check by means of electronic data transfer on a permit holder through the Minnesota Crime Information System and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System at least yearly to ensure continuing eligibility. The sheriff may also conduct additional background checks by means of electronic data transfer on a permit holder at any time during the period that a permit is in effect.

Yup.  Every year, the sheriff has to redo the electronic background check at least once, and can do it at any time.  And if he finds that there is, as the law says, "a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public"? 

See Subd 8:

The sheriff ... may file a petition with the district court therein, for an order revoking a permit to carry on the grounds set forth in subdivision 6, paragraph (a), clause (3).

Pretty neat, eh?  Which is among the many reasons why, in the greater scheme of things, the MCPPA is probably the model against which other modern, mainstream, commonsense "shall issue" carry permit laws will be measured.

Oh -- and as a minor thing: it's also why one village idiot (pictured at right) will likely be getting a knock on the door, sooner than later, and finding a deputy serving him with his copy of a revocation petition.

All's well that ends well.

There's been an interesting discussion of manufactured apparent expertise over at SJ, which appears to have inspired Bennett to weigh in here. 

The spark for the discussion was one of the many blogs that not-quite-promises to generate huge wads of cash for lawyers by gaming social media and them what loves it:

The thought of becoming an "expert" in 6 months may seem impossible to you. But I did it and I'm going to show you how.
But first let me share my story with you a bit because I think it's instructive.

Well, yeah, it was instructive:  I learned that somebody can, with some study and careful choice, become acknowledged by Google as an expert in some subject he may or may not give a damn about in less time than it takes to make a baby.

I mean, seriously -- this guy spent only six months studying this stuff, and then he's an expert?  Sheesh.

So, there I was, last weekend, giving a speech, billed as "Second Amendment Expert Joel Rosenberg".  (The speech is here; you can watch it, if you don't mind downloading a quarter gig -- one of the many things I'm not an expert in is turning a long .MOV video into a shorter one in some other format.)  I think it was a decent speech, and was well-received, by and large, by the crowd.   (And it was actually a lot of good, clean fun quoting Hillary Clinton and Hubert Humphrey to a crowd of conservatives, and then telling them an Eleanor Roosevelt story.  When it comes to issues around rights, there are folks who get it -- and who, alas, don't -- all along the political spectra, which was one of the points that I was trying to make.  Successfully?  I'm the last person to be an expert on that.)

I don't fault the organizers of the event for billing me that way, and that's not just a reluctance to bite the hand that helped me up on to the stage.  I was invited there to talk about the Second Amendment, and it's a matter that I do have some knowledge of, and a fair amount of passion about. And when it comes to gun laws, Lorman thinks I know enough about them to do a CLE class for cops and lawyers on the subject, so maybe that's not unreasonable.

Until I put it into context.  I know real experts on the subject, and have read their writings voraciously, for, well, years.  Professor Joseph Olson, who founded Academics for the Second Amendment -- now, there's an expert.  Eugene Volokh?  Ditto.  Glenn Reynolds?  Yup.  Clayton Cramer, an amateur who has written the definitive study on the racist roots of gun control?  You betcha.  (It's called, perhaps unsurprisingly, "The Racist Roots of Gun Control," and it's worth a read.  In my expert/inexpert/whatever opinion.) 

Me?  In that context, well, not so much.  Yeah, I started studying the Heller opinion about three minutes after it was posted to the Internet -- but it wasn't me who picked up the implications of the problematic paragraph in it, but Scott (it's the last sentence on p. 54):

Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

I studied it; Joe Olson, having been one of the midwives of the modern 2A acadmic movement. helped write one of the amicus briefs, and helped Gura prep for oral argument.  That's an expert.  In that context, if I held myself out as a "Second Amendment Expert," I'm not sure I could do it with a straight face.

But . . . there is that other thing, and I think -- and hope -- it differentiates me in a useful way from the Six Months to Google Expert types:  I know a fair amount about my subject, and can -- at times -- explain stuff* about the issues around the Second Amendment to folks who want to have stuff* about the issues around it explained to them.

Does that make me an "expert"?  I dunno.

Does remind me of an old joke:

A very successful young bowling ball salesmen brings his parents to the marina, one bright Saturday morning, and takes them aboard his new yacht.  The only time he's been to sea was on a Carnival Cruise, but he's bought himself a boat:  it's fifty feet long, and tricked out with all the nautical gear necessary to sail across the Atlantic, and back.  He excuses himself for a moment, and ducks down the companionway, coming back with dressed out with a neat blue blazer, and ascot, and a nifty captain's cap, complete with gold braid and such, on his head.

"Look, Mom and Dad -- I'm a captain!"

The father shakes his head.  "By me, sure, you're a captain.  By your mother, okay, you're a captain, but by a real captain, you're no captain."

I don't mind if others want to call me an expert, not really.  But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting business cards that say, "Joel Rosenberg, Second Amendment Expert."

Or, for that matter, a captain's cap.
 

_______________________
* Technical term.  

A few days ago, when I wrote about a guy who was forcibly catheterized to test if he was driving drunk (he wasn't) it seemed to me that this violated the requirements of medical ethics that medical procedures should only be done with the consent of the patient and for the benefit of the patient.

At the time, I thought that the AMA Code of Medical Ethics might address this in opinion 2.065, but I wasn't sure if I was reading it right, so I emailed the AMA press office:

I write about legal issues and civil rights. I'd like to know if the AMA has a policy addressing issues raised by a recent news story.

(See http://www.wlwt.com/health/20703731/detail.html)

It appears that Lawrenceburg, Indiana, police arrested Jamie Lockard, 53, for drunk driving, and got a judge to sign a warrant for a blood and urine test.  At Dearborn County Hospital, someone inserted a urinary catheter against against his will.  (All this according to a lawsuit he has filed.)

Some questions I have:

Has the AMA issued a statement about this incident or the lawsuit?

What is AMA policy with regard to medical testing (and associated procedures) conducted solely to satisfy a police investigation---i.e. there is no medical benefit to the patient?

Shouldn't medical professionals refuse to perform the test if the patient does not consent?

If a medical professional is faced with a patient who has been ordered by a court to undergo a medically unnecessary procedure against his will, does the court order override the usual concerns about consent and medical efficacy? As long as the medical professional himself is not a subject of the court order, isn't his primary duty still to the patient rather than the legal system?

The response from the AMA was minimal, which is what I expected given that I'm just a humble blogger. They sent me to these two sections of the code of ethics: 

E-8.08 Informed Consent

The patient's right of self-decision can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an informed choice. The patient should make his or her own determination about treatment. The physician's obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient or to the individual responsible for the patient's care and to make recommendations for management in accordance with good medical practice. The physician has an ethical obligation to help the patient make choices from among the therapeutic alternatives consistent with good medical practice. Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor, unless the patient is unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting and harm from failure to treat is imminent. In special circumstances, it may be appropriate to postpone disclosure of information, (see Opinion E-8.122, "Withholding Information from Patients").

Physicians should sensitively and respectfully disclose all relevant medical information to patients. The quantity and specificity of this information should be tailored to meet the preferences and needs of individual patients. Physicians need not communicate all information at one time, but should assess the amount of information that patients are capable of receiving at a given time and present the remainder when appropriate. (I, II, V, VIII) Issued March 1981. Updated June 2006, based on the Report "Withholding Information from Patients (Therapeutic Privilege)."
 
E-2.065 Court-Initiated Medical Treatments in Criminal Cases

Physicians can ethically participate in court-initiated medical treatments only if the procedure being mandated is therapeutically efficacious and is therefore undoubtedly not a form of punishment or solely a mechanism of social control. While a court has the authority to identify criminal behavior, a court does not have the ability to make a medical diagnosis or to determine the type of treatment that will be administered. In accordance with ethical practice, physicians should treat patients based on sound medical diagnoses, not court-defined behaviors. This is particularly important where the treatment involves in-patient therapy, surgical intervention, or pharmacological treatment. In these cases, diagnosis can be made initially by the physician who will do the treatment, but must then be confirmed by an independent physician or a panel of physicians not responsible to the state. A second opinion is not necessary in cases of court-ordered counseling or referrals for psychiatric evaluations.

A recognized, authoritative medical body, such as a national specialty society, should pre-establish scientifically valid treatments for medically determined diagnoses. Such pre-established acceptable treatments should then be applied on a case-by-case basis.

The physician who will perform the treatment must be able to conclude, in good conscience and to the best of his or her professional judgment, that the informed consent was given voluntarily to the extent possible, recognizing the element of coercion that is inevitably present. In cases involving in-patient therapy, surgical intervention, or pharmacological treatment, an independent physician or a panel of physicians not responsible to the state should confirm that the informed consent was given in accordance with these guidelines. (I, III) Issued December 1998 based on the report "Court-Initiated Medical Treatment in Criminal Cases," adopted June 1998.

That second section is the one I thought might apply.

Technically, the AMA spokesperson didn't even go so far as to say these sections apply to the incident under discussion, so this is hardly definitive, but I think I'm on the right track. Something went wrong here.

I don't understand how stuff like this happens:

According to the suit, police arrested Jamie Lockard, 53, on suspicion of drunken driving in March.

A Breathalyzer test showed he was under the legal limit, but Officer Brian Miller doubted the findings.

Lockard and his attorney claim in the suit that police took him to Dearborn County Hospital and forced him to submit to a urine and blood test.

Police said they obtained a warrant, but Lockard's attorney said his client was shackled to a gurney and had a catheter inserted against his will.

Scott Greenfield discusses some of the legal issues in his post "Places No One Should Ever Go", but I'm wondering about the medical ethics. I've been dealing with a lot of doctors lately, and they all seem to follow the ethical requirements that medical procedures should only be done (A) with the consent of the patient, and (B) for the benefit of the patient.

Sticking a tube up some guy's penis to see if there's evidence to convict him of a crime meets neither of these requirements, so I'm a bit surprised that medical personnel are willing to participate.

Knowing as little as I do about medical ethics, I decided to see what the AMA Code of Medical Ethics has to say. It's huge, and not written for questions like this, but opinion 2.065 sounds like it might apply:

Physicians can ethically participate in court-initiated medical treatments only if the procedure being mandated is therapeutically efficacious and is therefore undoubtedly not a form of punishment or solely a mechanism of social control.

The forced catheterization was a test, not a treatment, but I wouldn't think that would change the ethical question significantly.

I don't think the warrant changes the situation much either. A judge may be able to force a suspect to submit to an investigative medical procedure, but I'm pretty sure there's case law that a judge can't force an uninvolved third party to perform the procedure.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -- Winston Churchill

For those of you who didn't follow it, an amendment to a bill in the US Senate was defeated this week, on a 58-aye, 39 nay vote.  (Yeah, I know that sound strange; another time, okay?)  You'll find a remarkably typical MSM take on it here, and, honest, I'd love to discuss all the issues involved, but let's save that for another time; that's not this story. 

Part of the fight against passing this was the notoriously anti-gun advocacy group, the "Violence Policy Center," headed by Josh "Sugar Daddy" Sugarman*, and, as you'd expect, they were slaughtering trees, right and left, to turn out their agitprop, foremost among it, a "study" (actually, a collection of unreliable anecdotes, including at least one just plain lie) that purports to show that shouts that "Concealed Handgun Permit Holders Kill 7 Police, 44 Private Citizens Over Two-Year Period", which is, presumably, a bad thing and, putatively, some sort of reason that a law-abiding citizen who has been issued a carry permit in Minnesota can't be trusted to, say, carry a handgun in New York. 

(Pinky swear, since right about now I know that a bunch of you are reaching for your keyboards:  yes, there's a whole lot of other issues, around Federalism, states rights, carry permit laws, full faith and credit and all that stuff.  Not now, okay?)

Enter John Lott. Dr. Lott first came to public attention with the Lott/Mustard study that shows -- pretty clearly, I think; others disagree -- that among the effects of modern, mainstream, "shall issue" permit laws are to drive violent crime down slightly (when controlling for other factors), drive property crime up, also slightly.  By profession an economist, he's kind of been dragged, kicking and screaming only a little, into the national gun debate, and like anybody else who has been around for awhile, noticed that the antigun folks need to spend a whole lot of money on Nomex undies, what with their pants bursting into flame from lying a lot.

He noticed an unlikely anecdote on page 17:

Minnesota
# Concealed Handgun Permit Holder: Michael C. Iheme
Date: July 24, 2008
People Killed: 1
Circumstances: On July 24, 2008, Michael C. Iheme shot and killed his wife after she left
her job at an assisted living center. Court records show that she had an active harassment
restraining order against him and suggest a history of domestic abuse, including threats to kill her. After the shooting, Iheme called 911 and said, "I have killed the woman that mess my life up...." Iheme, who had a concealed handgun permit, was found guilty of second degree murder.

Source: "911 call: 'I have killed the woman that mess my life up," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 26, 2008;
"Man found guilty of killing estranged wife in St. Louis Park," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, February 6, 2009.

Yeah.  That does look strange, and unlikely, if you know anything about the subject.  The subject of a domestic OFP having a carry permit?  Unlikely.  Somebody with a history of domestic abuse being issued one?  It's not impossible, but it's not the way to bet.  Know a bit more, and it gets more unlikely -- Sheriff Stanek's office screwing up by issuing a permit to a domestic abuser with an OFP out on him?  Nah. 

But "nah" isn't a debunking.

Lott dropped an email to Andrew Rothman, a local Minnesota activist -- he's a friend of mine, and also the Executive Director of MADFI -- asking him to check it out, and Andrew got busy, sending one flunky off to see if there was some wisdom on the subject (check, but the flunky knew that) and interest in helping out on the part of David Gross (one of the few essential people in Minnesota Second Amendment activism, David's also an attorney, who knows the laws around this stuff backwards and forwards, having been involved in the writing of some and the practice of a lot of them for decades), and dispatching another -- John Pierce, second year law student at Hamline -- to the courthouse to look for the documentation that would have existed if Iheme had been a carry permit holder arrested on suspicion of murder.

Gross struck paydirt -- Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, who would have been the issuing sheriff, took a quick look at both the relevant laws, regulations, and facts, and went on the record that Iheme not only had not had a carry permit, but had never even applied for one.

Yup. Stanek didn't say it -- I am -- but the VPC was lying.  What they said just ain't so.

And Pierce, looking for the nonexistent orders around the carry permit, stumbled across the smoking gun:  the police report that showed that what had been seized was Iheme's purchase permit.  Iheme had a permit to purchase a firearm, not one to carry.  But that fact had been carefully left out of the Star Tribune's reporting with the Strib's reckless disregard for the truth, and picked up and repeated by the folks at the VPC, who -- having endlessly picked at all of the states' carry laws -- had every reason to believe that the Strib had gotten it wrong, but just passed off the lie to their easily-gulled audience.

How easy?  Well, the next morning, on the Senate floor, Robert Menendez of New Jersey quoted the VPC "study", as though it proved something -- only to be shot down (metaphorically, honest) by the sponsor of the amendment, John Thune, who had been informed that there were provable lies in it, this among them.

What can we learn from this?

Well, we can't learn, alas, that 58 yes votes is enough to get something through the Senate; it wasn't, the other day.  We can't learn that the Star Tribune, in knowing and reckless disregard for the truth, will carefully leave out the word "purchase", when talking about a "gun purchase permit" held by a murderer -- we already knew that.  That's just how they roll.

We can't learn that the anti-gun folks like the VPC simply don't care about truth -- we already knew that, too.

We can learn, though, that networked grassroots activism can do things that the highly-paid lobbyists -- from the VPC or anywhere else -- just plain can't do.

That's worth learning, again.

____
* Okay, okay:  I don't have the slightest idea if Josh Sugarman has a nickname, and, if so, what it is. 

Yes, You Do Have Staff, But You've Got to Be Staff, First Too Both First and Too

Twitter, the Favor Economy, and the Power of Crowds

You've seen the ad:  some bozo, trying to project competence and connections, tells a potential customer:  "I've got people to handle that."  By which he means he can look up folks in the Yellow Pages, hire some, and take his chances that they can deliver.  After all, they bought an ad in the Yellow Pages, and that takes, competence, commitment, and a checkbook.  Well, a checkbook. Credit card, maybe.

You can do better.  Hell, I do better, and I'm, well, just a guy.  Look it up.

Before I get to twitter, let me tell you about a friend of mine, who I'll call Bob.  (That's not his name; that is his face.) We met something like fifteen years ago, when he was dating another friend of mine, and we've hung out a fair amount, since. 

There are folks who call me a Renaissance Man, but well, Bob's downright Heinleinian:  he can (and does) pilot airplanes, maintain cars, fix stuff, build houses from the foundation up (he's done that, and can do any of the tasks required in all of that), sail a small boat (although it did tip over, that time I went with him, throwing us into the icy cold waters of Lake Minnetonka; then again, I was at the helm), load his own ammunition, and Ghu knows what else.

Some years ago (long past the statute of limitations; chill), he decided that the house he owned then was eighteen and a half inches too short -- he had a cool stove that wouldn't quite fit -- so late on a Friday evening, he and his brother, Al (also not his name) tore off one side of it, put in all the framing and other stuff, including the additional flooring, and put the side back up and had it all painted and sealed up, better than what code requires, by Monday morning.

I could tell you a lot of Bob stories, but let's leave it that he can do damn near anything that can be done with one's hands, and that, from time to time, I've asked a favor or two of him.  The one thing that he can't do is maintain his own computers, and -- very rarely -- I get a call asking just how one farbles a glimrod under Vista, or whatever, and for two reasons, I get to farbling his computer's glimrod.

Yes:  I'm making out a like a bandit, and if I told you more of the stories --

"Yes?"
"Hey, Bob?  It's Joel.  I know it's 2:30 in the morning, but there's water pouring out of the ceiling in my kitchen, and -- "
"I got it. Put on a pot of coffee."
"That'll stop it?"
"Nah.  But I'm on my way, and a cup of coffee would be nice.  Don't worry.  We'll get it done."

-- you'd get it, even more.  (Yes, we do have fun; there was the time that we tracked a stolen car through city streets... yes, "tracked," not "followed." )

I also do some other stuff that Bob thinks is a good thing to be doing -- some of the political stuff -- and while he always makes himself available to help out in that when he can, he's of the opinion that, say, the writing and blogging is something that I can do pretty well, and that he can't do it near as well, and would rather folks like me who enjoy it spend time on.  Works for me.

I don't want to overanalyze this -- well, more than I already did -- but it's a pretty common thing: friends do favors for friends, and it all makes the world a better place.  Other than the fact that we enjoy hanging out together, both Bob and I do pretty well -- not just by the favors that we do for each other, but by those we do for others. 

Not a big deal, but a friend of Bob's once needed a quick carry class; he called me and asked me, and yeah, she got a quick carry class.  I'm not asking for a medal, which is just as well -- nobody offered me one, after all.  I just want to make the point that this doing stuff for folks stuff won't go only in one direction.  For long; you know the kind of person who acts as though they think a favor is something that you do for them, because they're too busy with their own lives, and all.  How well does that work out for them? 

Which brings me to twitter.

A few months ago, I followed the lead of some friends-who-I've-never-met-in-the-flesh, and -- while I thought it was silly -- took out a twitter account.  Mainly, I use it as an ongoing party line, a way to play with other kids while I'm doing something else, and that's fun.

But . . .

You'll see it now and then.  A tweet something like, say:

Request: anybody got a link to a good javabuttons generator? I'm thinking something like http://twurl.nl/vcpzki , but Open Source.

Which was quickly followed by:

Check this site out. Tons of great java ideas if you have never been here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

Which is how I ended up with javabuttons and a neat nav bar over here, over the weekend. I like it. 

Here's another one of mine.  I'd been looking into a lawsuit in another state (never mind quite why) and tweeted:

Anybody got a shortcut to information about case C 05-04532 JW in US District Court Northern District of California, San Jose Division?

A few minutes later, an attorney (I'm grateful, but I'm not going to name him without permission, lest other folks think that they get to importune him for legal research -- and I'll get back to that in a minute, I promise), tweeted:

Ask, and ye shall receive. http://is.gd/B7NB

And, if you go to the link, you'll find -- as I did -- that it was just the document I wanted, and would have looked for myself, if I'd known where to.  (I don't know exactly where he got it, or how -- but it's public information, and if I had access to the sort of tools he has at his fingertips and the knowledge of where to find that sort of stuff that he's developed, I could have found it, too.  And if my zayda had breasts, he would have -- but I digress.)

But I don't, and I didn't. I just relied on whoever was a: listening on the party line that is twitter, b: had, in the past, found what I contributed interesting or valuable (in his individual opinion; nobody else gets a vote, and that particularly goes for me) enough to take some time out of his day to look something up for me, and c: -- and this is one of the keys -- wasn't being importuned by me for "yet another favor," without me doing anything for anybody else in return, because, at least among some of the folks I meta-hang-out-with, I've contributed enough (in their opinion; mine doesn't count) putting a few work credits into the favor economy is worth the trouble, to them, even though, smart folks they are, they're probably thinking the same thing that I am when a neat query comes across:

Cool.  I can find that.

So, yeah:  the world in general -- and twitter, in particular -- is full of folks who know stuff, many of whom  will be happy to lend a hand, from time to time, and all you have to do to tap in on it is, well, obvious: Go out and do stuff.  Have fun.  Talk to folks; solve interesting problems.  Get your own work credits in, but have fun with it. Help folks, and put a call out there for assistance.

It'll be fine.  Trust me.
 

 

Give me a moment; I'll get to it. Trust me.  And, since I'm a fiction writer, I'll even make it all turn out well in the end, with lessons learned, a bond between police and citizens strengthened, and all that cool stuff.  Hell, I'll even tease a friend who will find this sooner or later, maybe embarrass the badgelickers who don't see the difference between service-oriented policing and Bad Cop Stuff, and all that, although that would be a lot to ask.

It'll be fun.

Start here, with Shane Becker getting rousted by a couple of Loomis ATM Ninjas (mainly the shaved-headed idiot, below) for the crime of photography, with some help from Officers Fife and Fife II of the much (and deservedly) maligned Seattle PD.  I'll wait.

You back?  Good.

Since then, he says that he's gotten all sorts of attention -- fine -- and been called a douchebag by badgelickers all across the globe for, apparently, not respecting the authoritah of various folks with badges and guns.

Yeah, he's a douchebag, but not for that.  Respect, after all, has to be earned, and none of the folks with badges in this earned any.

Let's back up and start with a few basic principles of life:  be polite by default -- I'm not saying that you have to put up with a lot of bumptiousness from officious jerks without doing anything about it, honest; just do useful stuff, if you're going to do anything, and we'll get to that -- and (I can't believe I have to spell this out, but . . . ) if you're threatened with bodily violence by a jerk with a gun, call the cops and let them -- you can't make them, but you can give them the opportunity -- arrest him and introduce him to the more structured environment suitable to his special needs.

Anybody who doesn't get both of those is a douchebag.  So, yes, Shane Becker demonstrated that he doesn't get the latter, and maybe -- with some provocation -- he missed out on the politeness stuff.

Okay.  Now, let's roll back the tape, a bit, and make the assumption that Shane Becker's got both of those basics down, and -- what the heck -- let's cut the Seattle PD just a bit of slack, for fun, and assume that Officers Debra Pelich, GE Abed, and Sergeant William Robertson are merely ignorant and mildly abusive, and not out to buy themselves all sorts of bad press and maybe worse if given an easy, obvious alternative from the very start.  I'm not going to palm a card and make them great, mind you, but just decent, ordinary, service-oriented cops who got started off on the wrong path, and led themselves down it, so let's make it easy for the poor dears to do it right, from the start, and see where it might go.

To review the bidding:  Becker's been minding his own business, standing in line at REI, after taking a few perfectly lawful photographs in a public place of something going on in said public place, and a shaved-head, bullet-headed uniformed ATM Ninja in a Loomis uniform with a big Glock on his hip in a fast-draw Serpa holster walks over and starts making impertinent demands.

ATM Ninja:  When you're done over here --

. . . which this reminded me of.


It was about seven in the evening, the end of a nice spring day, and my older kid, then a junior at Washburn High in Minneapolis (a school so badly run that they had to fire all the staff, including some of the best teachers, and start over, but I digress...)  hadn't returned home. 

Not a big deal; she often went over to a friend's house after school, and had been known to stay for dinner, and the nice thing about cell phones is that it makes it easy to check up on things.

So I called her cell.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hey, kiddo.  About time to be heading home, no?"

"Sure.  I'm on my way right now."

"Oh?  Where are you?" 

A suspicious pause. "In a car."

"[Julie] giving you a ride?"

"No.  I'm getting a ride from a nice Minneapolis police officer."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "Put him on."

"I'm not in trouble."

"Good.  Put him on."

"I can't; I'm in the back, and there's that -- "

"It's called 'the cage.'  Slide the phone through.  Now."

She did.

The cop -- I'll call him Deputy Mike Williams, 'cause I got a strange sense of humor -- got on the phone. 

Nice guy.  He started off by explaining that no, my kid wasn't in trouble, and in fact, she and her friends had done a good thing.  He couldn't go into detail, he said, as there was another minor involved, but a friend of Judy's had disappeared from school, and Judy and her other friends had helped the police locate her, after which, well, he couldn't say more.

"You know my kid's going to tell me all about it."

"Sure.  But I gotta follow the rules; I can't."

Which was fair enough. 

I met him and Judy at the curb, and we chatted for awhile*.  Officer Williams couldn't go into detail, but Judy could, and she explained that a friend of hers -- I'm going to arbitrarily say it was a girl, and call her Granola Oatmeal-Smythe, which isn't her name, honest -- had was going through some not atypical teen drama, involving a boy having dumped her, and making noises about maybe doing some harm to herself, and disappeared from school in the middle of the day. 

After the school administration had turned a deaf ear to the concerns of the kids -- the administrators at Washburn High in Minneapolis were not exactly reknowned for having working clueservers -- the kids had ditched school to find Granola in Minnehaha Park, and enlisted the aid of a bunch of the boys and girls with guns and badges, and Granola had been located, unharmed, but still making those sorts of noises. 

She was taken to the nearest hospital for the appropriate sort of observation, with very little protest.  (My own guess is that the kid might, but probably wouldn't, have hurt herself if she'd been dared into it, but the badged adults and kids involved had all taken a sensible approach, and it probably didn't come as close to being tragic as it sounded to me, then, so I'm trying to downplay it a little.)

I could go more into detail, but if I do, that might identify Granola, so I won't. 

With the kid safe, it was starting to get late, and the cops involved all decided that they weren't all that comfortable with just leaving the kids alone at the park to make their various ways home, so various squads had gone off in different directions with kids in the back, and if it turned out that that wasn't exactly according to MPD policy, maybe I wouldn't have any trouble with that? 

I allowed as to how I wasn't in the business of enforcing even sensible MPD policy, much less stupid policy, and we parted with a handshake, and a mental note to myself that if I ever blogged about this to fudge a few details to hide Williams' identity, which I just did.

I was actually proud of Judy -- although fairly irritated that she hadn't informed her father (that would be me) as to what was going on, until it was all over.  Minnehaha Park is not the safest place in town -- there had recently been some remarkably unpleasant events there --

And she did agree that she should have, but pointed out that the kids actually were being driven around there by cops, and were probably pretty safe, under the circumstances. 

Which is where I thought things ended. 

But I was wrong.

Turns out that there were at least two people irritated by the whole thing -- one of the vice principals, and the school mall ninja security guard; I'll call him Ken Jones, even though that's not his name. Seems that their decision that there was nothing to worry about had turned out to be demonstrably wrong, and, let's face it, tinpot dictator types don't like to be proven wrong.

So, the next day, when Jones was searching through Granola's locker, what he was really doing was trying to find some way to get the kids who had embarrassed him in trouble. 

Which he kinda sorta found -- Granola's diary, in which she talked about all sorts of stuff, including some musing about how she might take an overdose of drugs.  His keen quasi-cop mind leaped to a stupid conclusion, and he summoned all the kids who had embarrassed him into the school security office, to engage in a little amateur interrogation.

I think his theory, such as it percolated through Ken Jones' pointy little head, is that if a kid is talking about taking drugs, other kids must be dealing drugs, and maybe that could be used to punish them for embarrassing him.

Which didn't work, which irritated the mall ninja.   So he called in the school "liaison officer", a cop who I'm going to call "Dan Grout" -- the name is pronounced like that stuff between tiles -- because that's the guy's name.

"I know you kids were dealing drugs to her," he opened with.  "And if you don't confess to me now, when she kills herself, I'll see you all charged with first degree murder."

At which point the kids started freaking out, just a little.

Including, on the inside, my kid.  But only on the inside.  "I want my father and I want my lawyer, now."

Daddy's girl did Daddy proud.

Grout snorted.  "Like you got a lawyer."  (Not sure I exactly agree with your police work, there, Danny.) 

"I have a lawyer, and I want my father and my lawyer, now." 

. . .

Which is kinda where I come in, a few minutes later, with the Vice Principal of the school calling me, out of irritation.  He gave me a rather abbreviated and not entirely accurate version of the events -- "We have to do these sorts of things for the children, of course" -- and asked what I planned to do about it . . .

"Well, I guess I better get in the car and head over there.  David on his way?"

"David?"

"My daughter's attorney.  He's on his way, right?  I'm kind of surprised that I haven't heard from him."  Then again, if he's representing Judy in this, I'm just the guy paying the bill, not the client, and he's got to at least talk to the client before he --

I think this is the moment where I realized that I was talking to an idiot:  "Why would a child need an attorney?" he asked.

"Because of jackbooted thugs with delusions that the Constitutions' been repealed for their fucking convenience," I said, about as gently as I could. 

"I don't think I like your tone."

"Well, good.  Let me ask you a question -- do you own your own home?  Got a lot of equity in it?"

"Are you threatening me, sir?"

"Play the tape back, if you've got any questions.  And, in case I'm not clear, nobody at your school -- not you, not your mall ninja, not anybody -- is to interrogate my kid on anything without either her attorney or me being present.  You can talk to her about her homework, but anything else, David or I are to be there.  On a good day, you might get us both.  You got that?"

Long pause.  "I want to hear a yes on that right about now."

"Yes."

That was the last time the Vice Principal of that school and I had a chat about anything. 

What we can learn from this is left as an exercise for the reader. 


_____________
* Since I know somebody's going to ask:  yes, yes, there was a gun visible on my right hip when I met them outside, no, that didn't enter into the conversation on either Williams part or mine.  Wasn't relevant. 

Got an email from Bob (not his real name.  His real name is Karl Keller*) earlier today, and it's worth sharing:

I went on a date with Kristy last night and we ended up in the emergency room. Well, that's the short version.

It's not as bad as I make it sound. A close friend of Kristy's (on blood thinners, I believe, for other conditions) called her while we were making supper. He'd been bleeding from a cut on his shin for a couple hours without clotting and needed to get to the emergency room.

We picked him up, got him there, and stood by while he told us jokes and funny stories for an hour or so as the doctor and nurses patched him, cleaned him up, and started in on some tests. All in all, this was a very successful trip to the emergency room. I made some mistakes, but no one died. For your benefit, here are a few mistakes not to make.

1. When removing items from the back seat to make room for the patient, don't remove the bag containing your major first-aid kit.

2. Find out how badly the patient is bleeding and how much blood he's lost before putting him in the car.

3. Even though you left the major first-aid kit behind, don't forget about the QuickClot bandage in your carry-bag. Sure, you might carry it to deal with knife, bullet, shrapnel, or other accident related trauma type injuries, but it'll probably help the patient with a popped vericose vein structure and thin blood just as well--but only if you remember you have it. Remember, review your kits often or they will be of little use when you are under pressure.

The idea is not to be looking out for opportunities to play doctor, but that, if you have only a little bit of knowledge, a clear understanding of where that knowledge begins and ends, and a fair amount of humility, you might end up being able to make a bad situation less bad.  Then again, maybe not; you pays your money, and you takes your chances.  But there are a fair number of times in life where doing something constructive right now is a lot better than doing the perfect thing days later. 
   
__________________
* Yes, I have permission to post this, and name him, silly. 

Is it ethical to sell-off a criminal's possessions to pay restitution to his victims? You'd certainly think so. After all, he took something from the victims, so he should have to give them back enough money to make up for what they lost. It's a basic case of making good for the damage done.

When the crime is murder, of course, the victim isn't around any more, and money can't really make up for the loss of a life, but as a practical matter, the courts usually award a large sum to families of the victims. All the criminal's money can be taken, and his assets can be seized and sold at auction to raise money for the families of the dead.

But what if the murderer is a famous murderer, and his only assets are worthless junk that is nevertheless valuable for being the property of a famous murderer? Is it ethical to pay restitution to the families of the victims from the sale of property that is only valuable because its owner murdered those same victims?

In the case of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Norm Pattis doesn't think so.

My paying job has kept me too busy to blog much, but I've been thinking about a particular application of something Fernando Tesón wrote on Tuesday about how to distinguish between moral posturing and genuine moral principles:

We propose The Display Test: a position is genuinely moral when the speaker can accept, without embarrassment, its bad consequences. For example, I am prepared to publicly accept, without embarrassment, that criminal defendants should have a number of rights, even if someone shows me that implementing those rights increases crime. If the speaker cannot concede without embarrassment the bad consequences of her proposal, then she is perpetrating discourse failure.

This made me thing of something that bothers me about the case of Richard Paey, who was sentenced to 25-years in prison for improper use of medically necessary painkillers.

First, consider this statement in another context by Virginia prosecutor Tom McKenna:

...we do have important cases to try, like the murder sentencing I finished today, an emotionally exhausting ordeal of shepherding the victim's family through the process of seeing punishment meted out (42 years for 1st degree murder).

Now here's a quote from a Reason article about Paey's long sentence:

"It's unfortunate that anyone has to go to prison, but he's got no one to blame but Richard Paey," Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis told the St. Petersburg Times. "All we wanted to do was get him help."

Locking a man in a cage for many years is a terrible thing. That he's a criminal who has done something terrible doesn't change the terrible nature of his punishment. It just means his punishment is justified. He deserves terrible treatment for what he's done.

Tom McKenna knows this and acts on it as a moral principle. He rightly takes pride in putting a murderer in a cage for a very long time.

Halkitis, on the other hand, is trying to dodge responsibility for the consequences of his actions. He doesn't take pride in Paey's sentence. He doesn't believe Paey received justice. He isn't standing on a moral principle. He's just posturing.

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

I recently ran across the above lyric somewhere on the web that I can no longer remember. You might think, as I did, that it sounds like a piece of gangsta rap about some gangbanger deciding between surrendering to the police or trying to shoot it out. In other words, trying to decide between being smart and being hard.

If you know more about music than I do, however, you recognized it right away as "The Guns of Brixton" by The Clash off of their landmark 1979 album London Calling. It's about police violence against blacks in Brixton (a part of London). Apparently, police were assaulting and sometimes killing blacks at an alarming rate. This eventually lead to riots and then to reform of the Brixton police.

Now consider this part of the same song:

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row

These lines appear at first glance to present a similar choice between aquiescence and resistance. But the situations are radically different. In the first situation, there is uncertainty about the outcome. If the police kicking down the door are not killers, it makes sense to give in peacefully instead of starting a violent confrontation that can't be won. Many members of inner-city drug gangs are aware of this, and once the police catch them, they come along peacefully. That's because they know the police are going to take them in but do nothing worse to them, so why get themselves injured in the process?

In the second case, there is no uncertainty. The pounding on the door is a death squad, coming to shoot you down. The only choices they offer are certain death or a chance to die fighting...or maybe, just maybe, to escape.

(I have no idea what was going on in real life Brixton. I'm just responding to the lyrics here.)

It's an important distinction. Throughout history, people have often found themselves in the uncertainty of the first situation without knowing that they were really in the second situation.

When the Nazis started to clear all the Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto in the late summer of 1942, most Jews believed that the Germans were sending them to work camps, and that resistance would only result in their needless deaths. Better to stay alive, even if it meant working as a slave.

In reality, the Germans were sending the Jews to the death camp at Treblinka, and they only stopped when they ran out of Jews. The Jewish population was reduced in 52 days from about 380,000 people to perhaps 60,000. Most of those remaining were either working for the German war effort or hiding.

In January 1943, the Nazis set out to exterminate the remaining Jews. This time the Jews knew what was going on and resisted, attacking and killing the German soldiers. The peak of the resistance was from mid-April to mid-May, 1943 and is known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Ultimately, however, the Nazis prevailed, and the Jews who had survived the fighting were sent to the death camps. This was the first uprising against Nazi rule in Europe, but it wasn't the last. The bravery and determination of the Warsaw resistance fighters was an example to others and remains so to this day.

We have a more recent example as well. When hijackers took over four airplanes on September 11th, 2001, the passengers and crew of three of the planes did not resist (as far as we know). Faced with uncertainty about the outcome, they did what appeared safe and cooperated with the hijackers, believing that to resist would be to provoke their own deaths.

We shouldn't be critical of them, however, because they didn't know what we now know. In any previous hijacking they would have been right, for the simple reason that once the plane landed somewhere, the hijackers would lose their advantage and eventually be forced off or, more likely, pursuaded to surrender. That didn't work this time because the hijackers had no intention of landing. Not knowing the true intent of the hijackers, the passengers didn't see that cooperation wouldn't work. They knew they were in the first situation, but didn't realize they were in the second. They didn't see that resistance would cost them nothing.

On the fourth plane, however, the passengers got word of what had happend to the other planes. They knew the full price of aquiescence. So they chose to act, to resist. To do otherwise would be to accept death. So they fought.

Although they probably saved the lives of a lot of people on the ground, at whatever the plane's target was, they lost their personal struggle. As with the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, their fight remains as an inspiration for others.

Addendum: I can't find the Clash's version of "Guns of Brixton" online, but you can hear a nice cover of it at Nouvelle Vague's MySpace page. (You'll have to click the link to the song. I can't figure out how to link direct.)

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