Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

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.

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.

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.