Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Students Have Rights Too

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On November 21, eighteen-year-old Emma Sullivan was on a Kansas Youth in Government field trip to the Kansas capitol. While there, she used her phone to post a message to Twitter about Governor Sam Brownback (R-KS): “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.”

Needless to say, Sullivan’s ‘tweet’ doesn’t exactly rise to the kind of political discourse I would like to see in our country. First off, it’s a lie—Sullivan did not actually speak to Governor Brownback at the event. Second off, expressing disagreement with a politician by saying he ‘sucks’ and ‘blows a lot’ is not much of a contribution to civil debate. But whatever I might think of Sullivan’s ‘tweet,’ there is no doubt that she has a fundamental First Amendment right to post it.

Well, Brownback’s office didn’t like it and notified Sullivan’s principal, and then Sullivan’s principal demanded that Sullivan apologize in-writing to the governor. Sound at all familiar? Since then, both Brownback’s office and Sullivan’s school district have distanced themselves from the situation. Brownback blames an over-zealous staffer for contacting the school, and the Shawnee Mission School District now says that Sullivan is not required to write an apology. Good.

Should Sullivan apologize? Probably. But her school has no authority to require it, and Brownback has no right to request it. The whole point of the First Amendment’s free speech clause is to protect political speech, no matter how offensive or absurd it might be. Sullivan posted the ‘tweet’ from her own phone to her own privately-obtained Twitter account, and as-such it’s none of her school’s darn business. If it were posted on school equipment or in a school publication, that would be different. Or if she were a minor, then the school would have some limited authority as her acting legal guardian. But Sullivan is eighteen, and made her own statement from her own equipment. Her school has no authority in this matter whatsoever.

Time and time again (and again, and again, and again, and again, and again) I find myself having to remind our public educators that they are government employees, and are thus bound by the constitutional limitations on government. Even if this weren’t the case (as in private schools), there is educational value in permitting students the broadest possible civil liberties in their schools. You cannot teach students about how to operate in a free society from an academic environment that more closely resembles totalitarianism—telling students what to say, what to think, what medicines to take, when to take them, when to urinate, when to inquire, and when accept blindly. One cannot learn about how to responsibly exercise freedom in an environment where they have none.

An Act of War . . . Against Pakistan

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Back in May, United States military forces killed Osama bin Laden at his hideout near Islamabad, Pakistan. Although U.S. officials initially reported that the Pakistani intelligence services were instrumental in finding bin Laden, there are many open questions still remaining about Pakistan’s complicity in protecting bin Laden during the years he was hiding in their country. Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been strained, with a flurry of accusations and counter-accusations going back and forth between the two countries.

But today, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces—led by the U.S.—attacked two Pakistani military outposts on the Afghan border and killed at least 28 Pakistani troops. In retaliation, Pakistan has closed its Afghan border, cutting off supply routes that bring one-third of coalition supplies into Afghanistan.

Our raid against the bin Laden compound was clearly justified, as bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been making war against the United States. Pakistan wasn’t the target; al-Qaeda was. This is another example of what makes the Global War on Terror so unique among wars. The belligerent is not properly a state, but a non-state entity that operates within other states. Pakistan, of course, could have interpreted this as an act of war against them . . . that was a risk we had to take.

But in this case, there is no such nuance. We attacked Pakistani military outposts manned by Pakistani troops within Pakistani territory. We have committed a clear, undeniable act of war against Pakistan, and they are within their rights to retaliate. Given that Pakistan likely did protect bin Laden and other al-Qaeda elements for many years, I’m the first to question whether they are the ‘ally’ they claim to be . . . but we can’t label them an ally while we blow up their border outposts. If we’re going to be at war with Pakistan, let’s admit it. If we’re going to be allies with Pakistan, let’s not wage war against them.

When Men Revile You . . .

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I’m the first to admit that I’m not always the humble, even-keeled guy I ought to be. I’m very opinionated and very outspoken about those opinions. I often find myself diving headlong into online debates about politics and, occasionally, religion . . . admittedly, sometimes when I probably ought to keep my mouth shut. But no matter how passionate I am about a particular subject, I always try to express myself in a polite, respectful, honest way that reflects my Christian values.

I dove into one of these debates recently on a friend’s Facebook wall. The topic began with an innocent post on the subject of people’s sometimes overly-sanctimonious ‘keep Christ in Christmas’ posts, but the comment thread quickly turned to a broader discussion of the original basis for a number of Christmas traditions—including a number of pre-Christian Roman, Nordic, and Pagan festivals. I covered this same basic topic back around Halloween, but I had some time to write up a reply and posted it. I also added my opinion on the subject of holiday-season political correctness and the double-standard with which it is usually applied (i.e., ‘Merry Christmas’ is branded intolerant, but ‘Happy Hanukkah’ or ‘Happy Eid al-Adha’ or ‘Happy Kwanzaa’ are all considered perfectly acceptable).

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. What stunned me was one the the replies I received:

“Scott Bradford, you are an absolute LIAR. Which is pretty much what I’d expect from a Christian.”
– Bill Wodenhelm

Read more . . .

Failure is an Option for the ‘Super Committee’

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As part of the hilariously insufficient debt ceiling deal back in August, Congress established a group called the ‘super committee’ that would be charged with deciding how to actually make the cuts mandated by the compromise. This group was Congress’s way of avoiding doing their job. Instead of actually making choices about how to reduce federal spending, Congress set up a new committee with a ludicrously tiny mandate (in comparison to the size of the crisis) and hoped they would do it instead.

The ‘super committee’—formally titled the United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—is made up of three House Republicans, three House Democrats, three Senate Republicans, and three Senate Democrats. Their responsibility is to figure out how to cut a paltry $1.2 trillion from the next decade’s combined federal deficits . . . which are running at over 1 trillion dollars/year. You do the math. And they have to report their decisions by this Wednesday.

We won’t really know if they meet that deadline until we get there, but the major media broke the story over the weekend that it appeared the ‘super committee’ would fail, and would either make no compromise recommendation or would make one that fell far short of the $1.2 trillion target. Fine by me.

You see, Congress foresaw this eventuality. In the absence of a plan presented by the ‘super committee,’ a series of across-the-board federal budget cuts go into effect in 2013 to reduce the deficits by the targeted amount. Good. Instead of fighting to the death over which Congressman’s pet-programs will be spared and which will be cut, we’ll just cut them all equally. This is what we should have done in the first place anyway, although we should cut enough to balance the darn budget instead of just reducing the planned increases. No program is actually being cut under any of these proposals; we’re discussing whether to increase each program’s budget by X percent or Y percent. They’re still increases either way.

Which is really the problem anyway. We need to quit wasting time with all this talk about non-solutions and start discussing how to actually solve our sovereign debt crisis . . . before we start looking like Greece. We can’t keep buying more government than we can afford.

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.

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.