Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Man Charged With Obama Assassination Attempt

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Last Friday, there were scattered reports of gunfire reported near the White House in Washington, DC, followed by reports that a vehicle had been seen leaving the area at high speed and was later recovered (abandoned) near the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge. I assumed at the time that this was simply your standard DC gang violence, though this incident was somewhat notable for its proximity to the normally-safe federal section of the city.

It turns out that my assumption was incorrect. This week, the United States Secret Service reported finding at least two bullet holes in White House windows (the bullets were stopped by a second layer of ballistic glass). The owner a the abandoned car—Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez—appears to have traveled 1,800 miles across the United States from Idaho Falls with the intent to kill President Barack Obama (D). Obama was in Hawaii at the time of the shooting.

Ortega-Hernandez was arrested yesterday in Pennsylvania and charged with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States—a man he referred to as the ‘anti-Christ’ who told his friends he “needed to kill.”

There have been many attempts to assassinate our presidents over the years, four of which have been successful. Many of the attempts (including this one) have been badly thought out and poorly executed by people who appear to be mentally unstable, though there have been occasional attempts that one might characterize as being more ‘serious.’ The last president to be injured in an assassination attempt was President Ronald Reagan (R), who was shot and seriously injured by John Hinkley Jr. in 1981. There were several attempts against President Bill Clinton (D), notably including a private airplane crash on the White House property in 1994 and a shooting at the White House later in the same year. George W. Bush (R) was also victim of several attempts, including another White House shooting in 2001 and an attempted hand grenade attack while he was visiting Tbilisi, Georgia in 2005.

This incident is a good reminder to all of us—political allies and opponents alike—to pray for the safety of the president. Nuts like Ortega-Hernandez are after him every day, though most of them get stopped long before they’re shooting rounds off at the White House. The presidency is a very dangerous job. Consider that, so far, 4 out of 44 presidents have been murdered in the line of duty. That’s nine percent. Would you take a job that had a nine percent murder rate?

So agree or disagree with the President’s policies, and do so vehemently. That’s politics. But while you’re at it, don’t forget to pray for the safety of the man—the human being—who holds the office.

The Supreme Court and Civil Liberties

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The United States Supreme Court has been faced with a number of very important cases over the last decade that address our most fundamental civil liberties. Thankfully, in most recent cases it has ruled correctly—though often by a depressingly narrow 5-4 margin.

Here is a review of how the Supreme Court has ruled on three important civil liberty issues over the last several years, and a look at two new ones the Court will be ruling on within the next year.

Right to Free Speech (Citizens United, 2010)

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2010 that the First Amendment right to free speech still applies in election season. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S. 08-205 (2010)), the court found that several provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law were an unconstitutional limitation on corporate speech.

Critics say that the First Amendment applies to people, not corporations, but the Constitution doesn’t say that. The First Amendment plainly states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” In fact, the Amendment goes on to say, “ . . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Corporations are peaceable assemblies of people, which have their own Constitutional protection in the context of the First Amendment. The Bill of Rights clearly codifies free speech as a fundamental civil liberty enjoyed equally by people acting individually and collectively (whether they be in corporations, non-profits, or ad-hoc protest communities on Wall Street).

Read more . . .

‘This is Only a Test . . . ’

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This is a test . . .

Because overwhelming us with mostly-spurious weather alerts, fire drills, and terror warnings just wasn’t enough, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will soon be performing the first-ever nationwide Emergency Alert System (EAS) test.  At 2pm ET today, every broadcast television and radio station in the United States will (or rather, should) interrupt its regular programming to let you know that EAS is capable of sending out a national alert.

EAS’s predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), was put in place in 1963 as a mechanism by which the President of the United States could authorize important emergency information to be broadcast all across the country in a national emergency. The system was expanded later to allow local and regional emergency broadcasts and severe weather alerts. The EBS and its dual-frequency activation tone were replaced in 1997 by the EAS with its digitally-encoded ‘SAME’ header (similar to an old modem noise), which has been used ever-since for local emergency broadcasts.

Like EBS before it, EAS is primarily intended for use by the President (or his designee) in a full-fledged national emergency . . . but in its fourteen year history, this national alert capability has never been used or even tested. While I object to the constant ongoing stream of weekly local tests and spurious alerts about a two-point-seven percent chance of a tornado, I’m equally troubled that the main function of something like EAS has never been tested in realistic conditions. All television and radio broadcasters and providers (including broadcast, cable, fiber, and satellite) are part of the EAS network, and they are all required to be able to receive and rebroadcast alerts, but we really don’t know if the thing would actually work the way we expect it to in an emergency.

Well, this afternoon we’ll find out. And our officials seem to have come to their senses because, from now on, the national alert capability will be tested annually. Better to test your systems fourteen years late than to never do it at all, I guess.

Update 3:30 p.m.: Well, the EAS test didn’t work very well.

I verified that it was carried on a DC-area broadcast channel over Verizon Fios, but it came through with poor quality audio. It was understandable, but it sounded like a bad AM-radio transmission. It also seems to have not worked for a significant number of Americans, including (notably) the New York metro area. Most satellite television customers didn’t get any alert at all (with some DirecTV viewers reporting that their TV’s played a Lady Gaga ‘song’ instead). Many others report getting no alert or hearing only static.

In other words, we’ve had a national emergency alert system in place for 14 years that doesn’t actually work properly. Nice.

Election 2011 Results (Final)

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Updated
Ballot Races
Virginia Senate, 13th
Dick Black (R):56.95%
Shawn Mitchell (D):42.78%
Other:0.27%
Virginia House, 87th
Mike Kondratick (D):49.45%
David Ramadan (R):49.92%
Other:0.63%
Loudoun Board (Chairman)
Thomas Bellanca (D):35.25%
Scott York (R):64.43%
Other:0.33%
Loudoun Board (Dulles)
Matt Letourneau (R):63.33%
Larry Roeder (D):36.40%
Other:0.27%
Loudoun Treasurer
H. Roger Zurn Jr. (R):98.86%
Other:1.14%
Loudoun Sheriff
Mike Chapman (R):54.18%
Steve Simpson (I):35.33%
Ron Speakman (I):10.10%
Other:0.39%
Loudoun Com. Attorney
James Plowman (R):51.82%
Jennifer Wexton (D):47.95%
Other:0.24%
Loudoun Comm. of Revenue
Bob Wertz Jr. (R):98.83%
Other:1.17%
Loudoun Sch. Board (At-Large)
Jay Bose:12.06%
Bob Ohneiser:31.05%
Tom Reed:56.23%
Other:0.65%
Loudoun Sch. Board (Dulles)
Anjan Chimaladinne:30.00%
Margaret Michaud:10.90%
Jeff Morse:58.91%
Other:0.30%
Loudoun S&W Conservation
Peter Rush:35.42%
Chris Simmons:37.63%
James Wylie:26.18%
Other:0.77%
Ballot Issues
Loudoun Fire Bonds
Yes:72.16%
No:27.84%
Loudoun School Bonds
Yes:57.93%
No:42.07%

Election LiveBlog

Watch this space for news from important local and regional elections!

Read more . . .

Get Out and Vote! I Did!

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I voted . . . Did you?

While the media continues to drone on and on about next November’s presidential election, the actual civic life of the country is focused elsewhere today. Here in Virginia, we are voting for who will represent us in the Virginia General Assembly and in our local city and county governments. Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey will also be holding state legislative elections and the people of Kentucky and Mississippi will be choosing their governors and other state offices. The people of Mississippi will also be voting on a very important state constitutional amendment that would legally recognize that human life begins when science, faith, and logic all say it does: at conception.

As I have told many friends and family members over the last several weeks, we do ourselves a disservice if we ignore these elections and focus instead on a national election that is still a year away. The national elections are important, no doubt, but our state and local governments have more real impact in our day-to-day lives. Your roads, fire departments, schools, police, libraries, and public utilities are the business of your state and local governments. Federal policy has comparatively small impact in these areas. The founders envisioned a system where the bulk of government would be at the state and local levels, while the federal government would stay focused on its comparatively narrow areas of responsibility—foreign policy, interstate commerce, printing money, etc.

So it is important that you pay as much attention to your local elections as you do to your national ones. It is important that you go out and vote today, assuming you live in a jurisdiction holding elections and are legally eligible. I did (and I even got to shake hands with a couple of local candidates). The polls in Virginia don’t close until 7pm, so you still have plenty of time to research your candidates and ballot issues and get out there.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.