I've been listening to a lot of commentary in the past couple of weeks related to the San Bernadino shootings and in none of those conversations have we been reminded of the Planned Parenthood killings, nor of the church shooting by the KKK adherent (the Charleston Church Massacre), or the familial shootings like the one in Troup Georgia that killed 5 people. If you look at the 353 shootings this year tracked by http://www.shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015 you'll see only one that was related to Islamic terrorism. Couple that with the data that gun deaths are in decline (suicides are inching up) since the 90's and you have to wonder at the hysteria being created by Trump and the media. (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/)
The Washington Post as an analysis at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/10/to-many-christian-terrorists-arent-true-christians-but-muslim-terrorists-are-true-muslims/ suggesting that Christian shooters are "excused" from the terorist label simply because Christianity is more familiar than Islam.
N.B. These numbers do not include the over 900 police shootings that resulted in death so far in 2015.
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Review: The Nomination by William Tapply
Federal Judge Thomas Larrigan is being vetted to be the next Supreme Court Justice. While ostensibly having no skeletons in the closet, in reality he has several and he enlists the help of some ex-Marine buddies to take care of those skeletons.
One of those skeletons was his underage mistress, An Li, in Vietnam, who had a child that Thomas took from her and had put up for adoption. An Li, having escaped Vietnam at the end of the war to Paris, had become a well-known actress but is now suffering from a fatal degenerative disease and she happens to see a photograph of a woman she is sure is her daughter, May, now having adopted the name Jessie Church. She tried to contact Jesse who now is an ex-cop working as a P.I. and hiding from a mobster she had testified against so now she’s on the run again and drifting toward her biological mother in N.Y.
I have read a lot of Tapply and mourn his demise. This book is a stand-alone, not part of his regular series, and is a good story. Not great, but it has an intricate plot with well-defined characters. I would have to agree with some reviewers that the book doesn’t hang together as well as some of his Brady Coyne novels. The ending, in particular, seemed a bit haphazard. It was published after his death so I suspect it may have been completed by someone else. Humorous when you think of the ghostwriter character in the book.
A larger moral question is whether we should continue to condemn people for acts committed while young and in the midst of war. As we know all too well, war places enormous stresses on participants. Larrigan assumes he will be condemned and I guess his overriding desire to join the Supreme Court colors his judgment, but by all other appearances he has been a model person since Vietnam. I suppose you could argue that his morality is more than flawed by his initiation of the acts that result in several deaths, but had he simply revealed his actions during the war with a mea culpa shouldn’t his actions have been forgiven? Does no one believe in individual reformation anymore? Or are we to be eternally subject to retribution?
One of those skeletons was his underage mistress, An Li, in Vietnam, who had a child that Thomas took from her and had put up for adoption. An Li, having escaped Vietnam at the end of the war to Paris, had become a well-known actress but is now suffering from a fatal degenerative disease and she happens to see a photograph of a woman she is sure is her daughter, May, now having adopted the name Jessie Church. She tried to contact Jesse who now is an ex-cop working as a P.I. and hiding from a mobster she had testified against so now she’s on the run again and drifting toward her biological mother in N.Y.
I have read a lot of Tapply and mourn his demise. This book is a stand-alone, not part of his regular series, and is a good story. Not great, but it has an intricate plot with well-defined characters. I would have to agree with some reviewers that the book doesn’t hang together as well as some of his Brady Coyne novels. The ending, in particular, seemed a bit haphazard. It was published after his death so I suspect it may have been completed by someone else. Humorous when you think of the ghostwriter character in the book.
A larger moral question is whether we should continue to condemn people for acts committed while young and in the midst of war. As we know all too well, war places enormous stresses on participants. Larrigan assumes he will be condemned and I guess his overriding desire to join the Supreme Court colors his judgment, but by all other appearances he has been a model person since Vietnam. I suppose you could argue that his morality is more than flawed by his initiation of the acts that result in several deaths, but had he simply revealed his actions during the war with a mea culpa shouldn’t his actions have been forgiven? Does no one believe in individual reformation anymore? Or are we to be eternally subject to retribution?
Monday, December 07, 2015
New Gun Rights petition fails at SCOTUS
In Friedman v City of Highland Park there was an attempt to expand gun rights beyond was was granted in Heller and McDonald, i.e. the right to own a hand gun in one's home for protection. The idea was that everyone would be able to own whatever class of weapon they desired. Today the Court refused to grant certiorari to the petitioners.
One of my Goodreads friends, an attorney, posted an excellent review of what that means:
"Today, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari in the case of Friedman v. City of Highland Park. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit had affirmed a District Court decision upholding a municipal ban on assault weapons. The Supreme Court, in an apparent 7-2 decision, refused to take an appeal from the Seventh Circuit decision. Consistent with the Supreme Court's usual practice when it denies writs of certiorari, the majority did not write an opinion. However, Justice Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Scalia. That dissent is set forth here.
There are many reasons why the Supreme Court may not grant a petition for certiorari in any given case. The majority of the Court may agree with the lower court's decision. Alternatively, they may believe that the particular case does not present the issues in a form in which a Supreme Court decision would be particularly useful. Accordingly, it is difficult to read into this denial of certiorari what the majority actually thinks. Based on the account of the case in Justice Thomas's dissent, however, it does appear that the majority may not be willing to go beyond the specific holding of Heller, discussed above in earlier posts, that the Second Amendment prohibits the banning of handguns in the home for self-defense. This denial of certiorari portends the possibility, feared by Thomas's dissent, that Heller may be limited to its facts.
That said, we probably will not know the extent to which the Supreme Court is willing, or unwilling, to extend Heller until a US Court of Appeals holds a ban on assault weapons to be unconstitutional (a scenario that will certainly happen, given the conservatism of some circuits, especially in the South). That will almost certainly prompt the Supreme Court to take the appeal, just as it was forced to take appeals relating to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") when some but not all circuits held it to be unconstitutional. Accordingly, we will not know the Supreme Court's final determination of these matters unless and until it takes one or more additional Second Amendment cases. Today's rejection of the Friedman appeal does not, however, bode well for conservative judicial activist proponents of an expansive meaning of the Second Amendment. One wonders whether the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino and elsewhere caused some Supreme Court justices to rethink their positions on such issues. It only takes four of the nine justices to grant a petition for writ of certiorari. Justices Scalia and Thomas were not able to persuade even two additional justices to grant certiorari in this case.
An article about this decision in today's Washington Post observes:
"The court’s action Monday continues a pattern. After deciding in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 that the Second Amendment provides the right for an individual to keep a weapon in the home, the court has avoided all cases that might clarify if that right is more expansive.
"Gun rights advocates say cities and states continue to put unreasonable restrictions on the constitutional right. But the court has not yet found a case it thinks requires its intervention."
One of my Goodreads friends, an attorney, posted an excellent review of what that means:
"Today, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari in the case of Friedman v. City of Highland Park. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit had affirmed a District Court decision upholding a municipal ban on assault weapons. The Supreme Court, in an apparent 7-2 decision, refused to take an appeal from the Seventh Circuit decision. Consistent with the Supreme Court's usual practice when it denies writs of certiorari, the majority did not write an opinion. However, Justice Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Scalia. That dissent is set forth here.
There are many reasons why the Supreme Court may not grant a petition for certiorari in any given case. The majority of the Court may agree with the lower court's decision. Alternatively, they may believe that the particular case does not present the issues in a form in which a Supreme Court decision would be particularly useful. Accordingly, it is difficult to read into this denial of certiorari what the majority actually thinks. Based on the account of the case in Justice Thomas's dissent, however, it does appear that the majority may not be willing to go beyond the specific holding of Heller, discussed above in earlier posts, that the Second Amendment prohibits the banning of handguns in the home for self-defense. This denial of certiorari portends the possibility, feared by Thomas's dissent, that Heller may be limited to its facts.
That said, we probably will not know the extent to which the Supreme Court is willing, or unwilling, to extend Heller until a US Court of Appeals holds a ban on assault weapons to be unconstitutional (a scenario that will certainly happen, given the conservatism of some circuits, especially in the South). That will almost certainly prompt the Supreme Court to take the appeal, just as it was forced to take appeals relating to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") when some but not all circuits held it to be unconstitutional. Accordingly, we will not know the Supreme Court's final determination of these matters unless and until it takes one or more additional Second Amendment cases. Today's rejection of the Friedman appeal does not, however, bode well for conservative judicial activist proponents of an expansive meaning of the Second Amendment. One wonders whether the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino and elsewhere caused some Supreme Court justices to rethink their positions on such issues. It only takes four of the nine justices to grant a petition for writ of certiorari. Justices Scalia and Thomas were not able to persuade even two additional justices to grant certiorari in this case.
An article about this decision in today's Washington Post observes:
"The court’s action Monday continues a pattern. After deciding in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 that the Second Amendment provides the right for an individual to keep a weapon in the home, the court has avoided all cases that might clarify if that right is more expansive.
"Gun rights advocates say cities and states continue to put unreasonable restrictions on the constitutional right. But the court has not yet found a case it thinks requires its intervention."
Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Review: The Harder They Come by TC Boyle
Audiobook: This book has to have one of the strangest titles, I kept trying to decide whether it was meant or be scatalogical or eschatalogical.
The first short section tried to define Sten who, while on a cruise ship side trip, kills a Costa Rican hood who was trying to rob him and some other passengers. Skip to back home where his son, Adam, a survivalist (and someone who kept reminding me of Holden Caufield which his strange mixture of bravado and naivete and world view) has hooked up with Sara, a local farrier and anti-government loner who refuses to wear a seatbelt and then disses the cop who stops her with inevitable consequences that fuel her anti-authority impulses. Adam refuses to be called by his given name, instead, trying to channel John Colter, after the real-life Lewis and Clark Guide who was an expert at living in the wilderness. Adam wanders in and out of reality (one might argue that Sara is equally delusional) and eventually commits a crime that makes him wanted by the police (Sara is, too, but for different reasons.)
It’s perhaps ironic (did Boyle intend this?) that Sten, who has survived Vietnam and seen horrible things, is normal, whereas his son, the advantaged one, is completely psychotic. As for Sara’s motivation, I’m not sure just how believable it was. She’s fifteen years Adam’s senior, had been a teacher in his father’s school, and now has adopted a freaky anarchical libertarianism.And then there’s the issue of guilt. What responsibility did Sten have for not dealing with Adam’s mental issues earlier? And what role did Sara play in the devolution into violence? The peripheral characters like Art and the Mexicans seem shapeless.
I hope I don’t sound too sarcastic in spots for the book is quite well written and brilliant at portraying the angst of the 21st century rebellious young. It’s sort of a Catcher in the Rye for the new century. There were a few things that bothered me, and perhaps it’s because I listened to, rather than read, the book: I failed to get a good sense of the geography of the place, the relationships between the several locations, i.e., Sten’s house, the grandmother’s house, and Adam’s “cabin,” and the roads that connect them. I also found switching POV’s a bit confusing as the characters moved around in time. If you are the kind of reader who must like a character to enjoy the book, you will most likely dislike this book. I have no such impediment and in spite of my dislike for all the characters the book certainly held my interest.
Based loosely on the case of Adam Bessler. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044362/Aaron-Bassler-shot-dead-Fort-Bragg-homicide-suspect-gunned-woods.html
The first short section tried to define Sten who, while on a cruise ship side trip, kills a Costa Rican hood who was trying to rob him and some other passengers. Skip to back home where his son, Adam, a survivalist (and someone who kept reminding me of Holden Caufield which his strange mixture of bravado and naivete and world view) has hooked up with Sara, a local farrier and anti-government loner who refuses to wear a seatbelt and then disses the cop who stops her with inevitable consequences that fuel her anti-authority impulses. Adam refuses to be called by his given name, instead, trying to channel John Colter, after the real-life Lewis and Clark Guide who was an expert at living in the wilderness. Adam wanders in and out of reality (one might argue that Sara is equally delusional) and eventually commits a crime that makes him wanted by the police (Sara is, too, but for different reasons.)
It’s perhaps ironic (did Boyle intend this?) that Sten, who has survived Vietnam and seen horrible things, is normal, whereas his son, the advantaged one, is completely psychotic. As for Sara’s motivation, I’m not sure just how believable it was. She’s fifteen years Adam’s senior, had been a teacher in his father’s school, and now has adopted a freaky anarchical libertarianism.And then there’s the issue of guilt. What responsibility did Sten have for not dealing with Adam’s mental issues earlier? And what role did Sara play in the devolution into violence? The peripheral characters like Art and the Mexicans seem shapeless.
I hope I don’t sound too sarcastic in spots for the book is quite well written and brilliant at portraying the angst of the 21st century rebellious young. It’s sort of a Catcher in the Rye for the new century. There were a few things that bothered me, and perhaps it’s because I listened to, rather than read, the book: I failed to get a good sense of the geography of the place, the relationships between the several locations, i.e., Sten’s house, the grandmother’s house, and Adam’s “cabin,” and the roads that connect them. I also found switching POV’s a bit confusing as the characters moved around in time. If you are the kind of reader who must like a character to enjoy the book, you will most likely dislike this book. I have no such impediment and in spite of my dislike for all the characters the book certainly held my interest.
Based loosely on the case of Adam Bessler. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044362/Aaron-Bassler-shot-dead-Fort-Bragg-homicide-suspect-gunned-woods.html
Tuesday, December 01, 2015
Review: East of Farewell by E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt. Now there's a name that brings back memories. And not particularly pleasant ones as a member of the “plumbers.” On the other hand, he served in the Navy during WW II on destroyers and as this book was written in 1942 while he was out there living the book.
It takes place on a destroyer on convoy duty. Each chapter is preceded by a short italicized section on preparing the ship, following by perspectives from members of the crew, each with a short bio. While clearly fictional, I suspect the characters had considerable basis from his experience.
Blacks had no place except as servants to the officers. Their world was “yessuh,” no matter whether they were seasick or had other difficulties. The captain was angry because their ship hosted the commodore who second guessed his every move. Others had come from farms. All felt the drudgery.
And I never realized until I went to sea how much you can hate something that you can’t beat … something that wins over you whenever you’re tired … something that won’t let you rest … where there is never anything but the feel of the spray and the shock of the waves and the blackness of night and the fog-gray days and always the sea. Always the sea and the tearing wind and no place ever to lie still while your heart pounds with the feel of the sea and your brain is tight with the smell of the sea and your belly is hollow with the fear of it, and always the ship goes on through the night and the days that are not day.
The theme and writing reminded me a little of Alistair MacLean. If you enjoy nautical fiction, you will like this book. Not up to Marley Mowat, or Herman Wouk, but good enough and of historical interest since it was written during the war it portrays.
It takes place on a destroyer on convoy duty. Each chapter is preceded by a short italicized section on preparing the ship, following by perspectives from members of the crew, each with a short bio. While clearly fictional, I suspect the characters had considerable basis from his experience.
Blacks had no place except as servants to the officers. Their world was “yessuh,” no matter whether they were seasick or had other difficulties. The captain was angry because their ship hosted the commodore who second guessed his every move. Others had come from farms. All felt the drudgery.
And I never realized until I went to sea how much you can hate something that you can’t beat … something that wins over you whenever you’re tired … something that won’t let you rest … where there is never anything but the feel of the spray and the shock of the waves and the blackness of night and the fog-gray days and always the sea. Always the sea and the tearing wind and no place ever to lie still while your heart pounds with the feel of the sea and your brain is tight with the smell of the sea and your belly is hollow with the fear of it, and always the ship goes on through the night and the days that are not day.
The theme and writing reminded me a little of Alistair MacLean. If you enjoy nautical fiction, you will like this book. Not up to Marley Mowat, or Herman Wouk, but good enough and of historical interest since it was written during the war it portrays.
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