More Positive Thinking

One of the biggest worries for the future of the United States has been the tendency of President Trump to make dictatorial pronouncements that threaten our institutions in violation of clear constitutional rights and democratic institutions, for example, threatening not to leave office even if not re-elected.

There has been some recent reason for hope on that point.

First, today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling by a 6-3 vote affirming that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender rights is not just important because it has great impact on the merits. It is also important because it has shown a willingness of two-thirds of the conservative majority court, including two conservative justices, to show judicial independence in the fact of a Trump administration priority. 

Second, in a very pointed rebuke of President Trump who was seeking military intervention (unlawfully) in response to Black Lives Matter protests, both Defense Secretary Esper (the top civilian appointee in the Department of Defense) and Joint Chiefs Chair Milley (the highest ranking military officer in the United States) made public statements to troops reminding them to defend the Constitution and not the President.

Third, this win for gay rights comes on the heels of a widespread movement in response to the Black Lives Matters protests driven by the George Floyd case in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which has resulted in two main kinds of change.

The protests have led to reforms aimed at police misconduct (with a big legislative win in Colorado, and a smaller one in New York State, local legislation like an ordinance passed in Louisville, Kentucky in the wake of the tragic death of an innocent EMT in a botched no knock drug raid and the removal of police officers from the Denver Public Schools, and even baby steps with bipartisan federal legislation also here) and the backbone to punish bad cops under existing laws. Select court rulings have also backed up the protesters.

And, the protests have led to the widespread removal of confederate symbols (including a decision to rename the Stapleton neighborhood, named after a Colorado politician elected with KKK support and announcements from the leaders of the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy - the Army has considered but not taken action) and removal of many slaveholders, racist villains, and confederate monuments (sometimes by force and sometimes by official action also here) not just across the U.S., but also in the U.K. and Belgium.

Big businesses like Starbucks, Disney and T-Mobile, when pressed, have usually taken sides against the racist right. Even NASCAR, a Southern and rural cultural icon, has banned confederate symbols without blowback from anyone that matters:

This is reflected in dramatic shifts to the left in public opinion polling across the political spectrum.

Basically moderate Republicans and independents have finally had enough of Trump and the politicians who have enabled him and of abuses by police and of Confederate symbols. It feels like we have reached a tipping point after nothing seemed like it had any impact on support for all of these things for years.

The pendulum and momentum in American politics is swinging back to the left again less than five months from the November 3, 2020 general election, which is exactly when it counts.

Fourth, polling currently strongly favors Democratic nominee Joe Biden over incumbent Republican President Trump in the 2020 general election, both by large margins in national polls, and by poll leads in excess of the margin of error in enough swing states for Biden to win the electoral college. Even the "betting odds" have flipped into Biden's favor. The protests have strengthened rather than hurt Biden. Today's summary from Real Clear Politics is as follows:

Polling also shows Democratic candidates leading in enough U.S. Senate races to regain control of the U.S. Senate. Even formerly Republican leaning states like Montana, Georgia, Kansas, Iowa and Kentucky are now polling in the too close to call range. For example, Democrats lead in U.S. Senate races in Arizona (+9.8), Colorado, Maine and North Carolina (+0.2)

This looming electoral disaster for Republicans is also undermining GOP support for President Trump in Congress, and some prominent Republicans have come out in support of Biden over Trump.

Take Guns Away From Family Members Who Can't Use Them Properly

If you know enough to excuse your father's criminal conduct after the fact based upon his mental health issues, you had a moral responsibility to take away his guns before an incident like this one happened. 

President Trump, of course, in addition to agitating this man until he criminally harassed a couple of innocent men, also blocked a measure that would have kept guns away from people who were dangerously mentally ill. But, just because the law doesn't require you to take action doesn't mean you don't have a moral responsibility to do so.

LOVELAND, Colo. — A Loveland man faces felony charges after allegedly concluding that two men going door-to-door in his neighborhood were members of the protest movement known as Antifa – and then ordering them to the ground and holding them at gunpoint. . . .  The incident unfolded after the man called police, said there were two men wearing masks near his home, and announced he was armed and going to go confront them. 

. . . When officers arrived in the 2400 block of Dawn Court around 6 p.m. Thursday, they encountered Scott Gudmundsen dressed in fatigues and holding two men on the ground at gunpoint. . . . But the men weren’t troublemakers – they work for a local roofing company and were wearing blue polo shirts with the firm’s name on them, shorts, tennis shoes and white surgical-style masks. 

. . . One of them is a Colorado State University football player who is 20 years old and works part-time at the roofing company. The student is a "man of color," according to a statement from the university.  The other man is 27 and an employee of the roofing company. . . . 

“They were canvassing the neighborhood because of the recent hail storms[[.]" . . .  There was no evidence that either of the men did anything wrong. “Nothing at all[.]" 

. . . At the scene, police arrested Gudmundsen, 65, who lives around the corner from where police encountered him. Gudmundsen was armed with two weapons, Shaffer told 9Wants to Know: A Glock pistol, and a second Glock pistol that had been converted into a longer weapon that looked like a carbine rifle. Police seized both guns as evidence, Shaffer said.

The incident unfolded in a southwest Loveland neighborhood a few blocks west of Thompson Valley High School. . . .  Gudmundsen called police, said there were two “Antifa guys” in the neighborhood and that, “I am going out there to confront them.” Gudmundsen told police in the call he was armed and wearing tactical gear, Shaffer said.

A second person also called police around the same time and said a man in fatigues was holding two people on the ground at gunpoint in the street.

President Trump has suggested that Antifa agitators have been responsible for recent demonstrations across the country calling for greater police accountability in use-of-force incidents.

According to Larimer County Jail records, Gudmundsen was booked at 6:14 p.m. Thursday on suspicion of two counts of felony menacing and two counts of false imprisonment. He is scheduled to be in court June 18. A man who said he was his son, Stanley Gudmundsen, emailed 9NEWS and said his father is ill and currently undergoing treatment at a mental health facility. 

"Our sincerest thoughts go out to the two salesmen and we apologize to them and their families for the actions of our father and wish them well," he wrote.

From here. 

Demographic Trends In China and India

Demographic transitions to fewer children per family have been experienced everywhere that has undergone economic development. But, only a few have seen this accompanied by a severe gender imbalance among young people.

One historic policy tool in ancient times when there was an excess of young men was been to start foreign wars - which kills some of the excess young men, and allows some of those who survive to take women from abroad as plunder. 

I sincerely hope that this won't happen now, and that fact that so many of these excess men are only children may tame this political instinct. But, policymakers need to be aware of the pressures pushing leaders in China and India in that direction.

China is seven years away from peak population. 

For 36 years, China’s ruling Communist Party stipulated that couples could have only one child except in special circumstances, such as if they lived in a rural area and their first child was a girl or a boy with disabilities. It was part of a strategy to boost China’s growth rate and its living standards at the same time.

The policy worked too well. In China today, home to 1.4 billion people, there are 100 million people under the age of 40 who are an only child. But the traditional preference for sons — and the associated practice of aborting daughters — means that there are about 34 million more men than women.

That in itself is a big problem. But add into the mix a tendency among millennial women to delay marriage and having even one baby — or none at all — and it’s a demographic time bomb.

China’s population is forecast to peak at 1.45 billion as soon as 2027, then start a long decline. About one-third of the population will be over the age of 65 by 2050.

In 2015, the Communist Party started unwinding the one-child policy, but it has had almost no impact. Women increasingly want careers of their own, and many would rather channel their energy into giving one child a good start in life than split their resources between two.

From the Washington Post.

Solutions which one professor has been suggested include legalizing polyandry (i.e. allowing women to have more than one husband), and legalizing brothels. From the link above:

Chinese authorities have been trying for three years to reverse the devastating imbalances of their one-child policy and coax couples to have more children. They’ve told couples that it’s their patriotic duty to have two babies. They’ve dangled tax breaks and housing subsidies. They’ve offered to make education cheaper and parental leave longer. They’ve tried to make it more difficult to get an abortion or a divorce. None of this has worked. China’s birthrate remains stubbornly low and men greatly outnumber women, creating a demographic crisis that could hinder economic growth for decades to come. . . . 

“If two men are willing to marry the same wife and the woman is willing, too, what reason does society have to stop them sharing a wife?” [Professor] Ng asked, citing polygamy as a common custom in ancient times and a continuing practice in some strains of Islam.

“I’m not denying the advantages of monogamy here, such as how exclusive long-term relationships can benefit kids’ growth and education,” Ng wrote in his column, according to the website SupChina, which first reported in English about the controversial remarks. “But given China’s skewed sex ratio, it’s necessary to consider allowing polyandry legally.”

Plus, it would just be more efficient, he continued, suggesting that women would have no trouble meeting the physical needs of multiple husbands.

“It’s common for prostitutes to serve more than 10 clients in a day,” Ng wrote, before taking off on another offensive tangent. “Making meals for three husbands won’t take much more time than for two husbands,” he added. Ng’s column went viral on the Chinese Internet. And many women on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, were unimpressed. 

“It made me throw up,” wrote a woman calling herself Keely, asking why Ng didn’t put himself in the woman’s shoes. 

“I’m shocked by what he says. Is it 2020 now?” asked Fuduoduo.

“Let me translate what he means: he wants to legalize sex slaves,” said another.

Ng is steeling for a fight. He wrote that his next column aimed at redressing gender imbalances would be about legalizing brothels. Because China’s gender mismatch has caused a fierce competition among men looking for wives, he said, “a man’s right to achieving sexual satisfaction is being severely violated if legal sex work is not allowed.”  Legalizing sex work and building more brothels would allow men to attend to their “urgent needs,” he wrote.

India, for different reasons, also has a significant excess of men. 

India, a country that has a deeply held preference for sons and male heirs, has an excess of 37 million males, according to its most recent census. The number of newborn female babies compared with males has continued to plummet, even as the country grows more developed and prosperous. The imbalance creates a surplus of bachelors and exacerbates human trafficking, both for brides and, possibly, prostitution. Officials attribute this to the advent of sex-selective technology in the last 30 years, which is now banned but still in widespread practice. 

In the two countries [China and India], 50 million [of the 71 million] excess males are under age 20.

Disruptive Stress Tests

Senate Bill 20-217, a comprehensive police misconduct prevention bill that passed the Colorado General Assembly today with bipartisan majorities, and will almost certainly be passed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis in a few days, leaves me more hopeful than I have been at any time in the last three months.

Our society has faced some major stress tests in the last few years. It has faced the far right, openly racist agenda of Donald Trump's Presidency. It has faced COVID-19 which has killed 116,825 people in the United States so far as I write this post, and has shut down the economy in an uncoordinated response of mixed effectiveness, and will almost surely have killed twice as many people before the year ends. It has raced national and global mass protests and riots over police brutality on a scale not seen in my lifetime.

Seeing protests produce lasting policy changes, a sea change in public opinion and another big wave of eliminating Confederate symbols from the U.S. landscape is gratifying. 

It is looking increasingly likely that Biden will defeat Trump in November and that Republicans will lose control of the U.S. Senate, while Democrats hold onto control of the U.S. House. Republicans may suffer down ticket losses in state and local races as well.

The impact of COVID-19 will be multifaceted and complex. But, I have little doubt that the end result will be a society that is more resilient, more environmentally sound, better able to cope with future epidemics, and will have a better safety net.

The armed far right rallies for the right to get haircuts and not use face masks, which resulted in many protesters getting sick and changing their tune, paled in comparison to the protests on the left that followed a few weeks later against police brutality, which accomplished far more.

The right is well aware that it is crumbling. Trump was yet another Republican President to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, and he won the electoral college by the thinnest of margins in a handful of swing states. Most Americans, I believe, and an even larger share of American elites, understand that the American people made the wrong choice when they elected Trump, who has done unfathomable damage to our nation. 

The right has recognized that it can stay in power only with gerrymandering, voter suppression, threats of violence, and other illegitimate means of maintaining power, and that it will not be able to do so forever. Little by little, the left has chipped away at these unsustainable dirty tricks.

Trump's victory has irrevocably forfeited for the Republican Party the support of Generation X, Millennials, women, and everyone else who isn't a white conservative Christian, for all time by large margins.

He has used the bully pulpit to legitimatize a far right made up of white nationalists, neo-Confederates, and neo-Nazis, swelling their ranks dramatically and encouraging open acts of hate. He has won over straight white Christians who are older, uneducated, rural, and Southern, but that is a shrinking demographic. With every election, a disproportionate share of voters who have died since the last election are Republicans, and young people are not becoming more conservative with the passage of time as they age. 

Trump has done so at the cost of alienating business elites, mainline Christians and other more moderate conservatives. Businesses historically aligned with the GOP have moved quickly to shut down overt racism and violent rhetoric by employees within their ranks. The international standing of the United States has plummeted by almost every measure.

Their culture, like their side in the Civil War, is a lost cause. Trump's movement is a rag tag collection of losers who are out of touch with reality, whose leader is the most flawed man ever to occupy the White House, a deeply corrupt, mean spirited, idiot and pathological liar.

When Disney is touting a new series appropriate for gay pride month, and a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage, it is too late to turn back the clock on gay rights.

Throwing shade at President Obama, the most popular American political leader in a generation whose personal character was unblemished, is not an effective political tactic with anyone but hard core converts to Trumpism.

Trump's victory was a major battle won by the cultural right in the culture wars that have been raging since before the American Revolution, but they are losing the war and Trump has discredited their movement and party with too many of the people whose support they need to win elections going forward.

The 2020 election is also the last hurrah of a generation of politicians who will soon have no choice but to pass the torch to the next generations.

An Advanced Vocabulary Lesson

From Questionable Content.

(The woman on the left is a human who has fallen in love with the woman on the right who is her business partner and is also an artificially intelligent robot.)

Quote of the Day

You ever heard of a "symposium," where scholars get together to talk about their scholarly ideas? Well, that's Attic Greek for "drinking party."

- Today, from Steve Harvey (I won't vouch for the accuracy of the translation, but he's not entirely wrong).

Today is World Oceans Day!

This little video suitable commemorates what is good and what is horrible about the state of today's oceans in one perfect little production. 

The video captures the gist and spirit of the slice of life comedy (with a serious undercurrent) mermaid comic called "The Little Trashmaid" run by its author, with new installments released roughly every two weeks.

Fact 1: Plastics are the most common element found in the ocean today. Plastic, in particular, is harmful to the environment as it does not break down easily and is often mistaken as food by marine animals. 

Fact 2: According to a study done by the University of Georgia, 18 billion pounds of plastic trash winds up in our oceans each year. To put that in perspective, it’s enough trash to cover every foot of coastline around the world with five full trash bags of plastic…compounding every year. 

Fact 3: The 5 most common items found in coastal cleanups around the world are all single-use plastics. They are: plastic cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic beverage bottles, plastic bottle caps, and plastic straws and drink stirrers. 

Fact 4: There are 25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Of that, 269,000 tons float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea. 

Fact 5: 80% of trash in the ocean is from land-based sources, including individuals, industry and improper waste management/infrastructure. Only 20% is the result of ocean-based sources, such as the fishing, shipping, and cruise ship industries. 

Fact 6: Plastics cause more than 80% of the negative effects on animals associated with ocean trash. 

Fact 7: There is an island of garbage twice the size of Texas inside the Pacific Ocean: the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California is the largest oceanic garbage site in the entire world. It’s here that the number of floating plastic pieces in the water outnumbers total marine life six to one in the immediate vicinity. 

Fact 8: Ocean pollutions kills more than one million sea birds each year. 

Fact 9: A recent survey found ocean pollution is more common in deep waters (more than 2,000 feet deep), with the most common offenders being plastic bags, metal cans, fishing equipment, glass bottles, shoes, and tires. 

Fact 10: Research estimates anywhere from 15 to 51 trillion particles of floating micro plastic are in our oceans, weighing between 205-520 million pounds. This includes plastic microbeads (used as exfoliates in some personal care products) and synthetic fibers, both of which are too small to be filtered out by many waste water treatment plants. 

Fact 11: Approximately 4 billion pounds of trash per year enters the ocean. 

Fact 12: Approximately every square mile of ocean has more than 45,000 pieces of plastic floating in it. 

Fact 13: There are dead zones in the oceans that have been created by pollution making life in those zones impossible for marine or plant life. 

Fact 14: There are about 500 dead zones in the ocean, which covers a similar size to the United Kingdom. 

Fact 15: Over 100,000 marine animals die every year from plastic entanglement and ingestion. 

Fact 16: Carbon emissions harm the oceans as well as the air. If our behavior continues as is, the surface water of the ocean could be 150% more acidic than it is now. 

Fact 17: Not all sewage that enters the ocean is treated. 80% of sewage that flows into the Mediterranean Sea is untreated, which can lead to disease. 

Fact 18: Oil spills only contribute to 12% of the oil in the ocean. 36% of the oil comes from runoff sources from cities and companies. 

Fact 19: Ocean noise pollution is an issue, too. Ships, tankers, and shipping containers emit sounds like high-intensity sonar and air guns. This noise pollution injures fish, disrupts their habitats, and more. 

Fact 20: Over one-third of the Atlantic ocean that shellfish live in is negatively impacted by pollution. This adversely affects the shellfish businesses on the East Coast. 

Fact 21: It’s estimated that by the year 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish (by weight). 

Fact 22: Fish and other marine life often can’t tell the difference between plastic and food. If the animal eats plastic, they can’t digest it. The plastic fills their stomachs, so they starve to death. 

Fact 23: Every year, about 1.5 million tons of nitrogen pollution flows into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River. 

Fact 24: China and Indonesia are the world’s biggest contributors of plastic pollution in the ocean. Combined, they account for one-third of total ocean pollution. 

Fact 25: Plastic makes its way to the depths of the ocean. Studies have found that crustaceans in the Marianas Trench, the ocean’s deepest point, have ingested plastic. 

Fact 26: Approximately one truckload of plastic enters the ocean every single minute. 

Fact 27: The waste in the ocean takes a long, long time to decompose. Styrofoam takes 80 years, aluminum takes 200 years, and plastic takes 400 years. 

Fact 28: In some of the most heavily polluted sections of the ocean, plastic outweighs plankton by six times. 

Fact 29: There’s enough plastic in the ocean to circle the Earth 400 times. 

Fact 30: Chemicals in heavily polluted waters can make their way back to us and cause serious health issues like reproductive problems, hormonal problems, kidney damage, and nervous system damage.

You can read more about the problem of pollution in the ocean here. It is a case of the "tragedy of the commons" on an epic scale.

Charles Dickens Was A Dick

Nothing has more tainted Dickens’s reputation than his public repudiation (via an advertisement in the Times) of his wife, Kate, who had borne him 10 children and suffered all his demands for 22 years. Wilson’s house, he tells us, overlooks the back garden of 70 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, whence Catherine Dickens was exiled, with the company of only one of her children, Charley, their eldest son. The others were forbidden to see her. We have found out recently that Dickens tried to have her certified insane, so that she would be put in an asylum. Not only did he want to be free to pursue an affair with Nelly Ternan, he wanted somehow to declare that it was all his blameless wife’s fault. He was the wounded party.

From The Guardian. 

I also have it on good authority that Leo Tolstoy was also a brilliant writer and a horrible husband. Ditto Percy Shelly. Likewise, Patrick Henry kept his wife in the basement and tried to have her committed.

It Is Bad For Local Residents To Have A Volcano Erupts In The Middle Of A City

Who knew that a volcano erupting in the middle of a major city "can adversely impact human populations"?

Of course, your risk is greatly elevated if your city, such as Auckland, New Zealand (where I used to live) is "built on top of a volcano field."

Volcanic eruptions are a complex natural hazard, more appropriately described as a suite of natural perils occurring in parallel, in sequence, and/or multiple times in various combinations. The non-discrete nature of volcanic eruptions presents notable challenges in terms of eruption forecasting, response, and long-term management. Volcanic eruptions can adversely impact human populations in a number of ways, beyond killing or injuring individuals (e.g., Auker et al., 2013). Eruptions can prompt evacuations in an effort to minimise the number of fatalities (e.g., Tobin and Whiteford, 2002, Wilson et al., 2012a, Mei et al., 2013). Eruptions can also damage, destroy, or otherwise compromise infrastructure and services relied upon by modern societies, hindering response processes and daily life. Agriculture, horticulture, and forestry can also be impacted, affecting livelihoods and societal food sources. Finally, eruptions can directly and indirectly impact tourism and economic activity due to real or perceived danger and business disruption. 

Given the potential for eruptions to cause devastating and catastrophic impacts, it is fortunate few urban centres are built directly on top of a volcano or volcanic centre. According to the Global Volcanism Program, only 6% of confirmed or presumed Holocene volcanoes have over 100,000 people living within 5 km of the volcano, and < 1% (12 out of 1532) have over a million people living within 5 km of the volcano. Most commonly, if an urban centre is exposed to volcanic hazards, it is exposed to volcanic ash or gas as these can reach areas at considerable distances from the source volcano. Volcanic ash is generally disruptive rather than destructive, and while often considered more of a nuisance, volcanic gas can cause health and agricultural impacts in situations where there are sufficient concentrations. Both volcanic ash and gas can present considerable challenges, but there are rarely major, long term or permanent changes to cities as a result; this is in contrast to the consequences of proximal hazards, which have historically caused considerable changes to or abandonment of inhabited areas. 

What happens when an urban centre is co-located with a volcano or volcanic centre, and is thus exposed to proximal hazards in addition to volcanic ash and/or gas? 

In this paper, we use a scenario approach to explore the potential consequences of volcanism within an urban centre. Specifically, we examine the implications of a monogenetic eruption for the city of Auckland, New Zealand, which is built on top of a volcanic field. Developing such information on future disaster risk is essential to underpin disaster risk management decisions to improve resilience.

From the introduction to: 

Natalia I. Delinge, et al., "Investigating the consequences of urban volcanism using a scenario approach I: Development and application of a hypothetical eruption in the Auckland Volcanic Field, New Zealand" 336 Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 192-208 (April 15, 2017).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2017.02.023

There are at least two well known examples of this happening catastrophically in the past, one in historic times, in the city of Pompeii in what is now Italy but was then part of the Roman Empire, and one at the boundary between historic and prehistoric times, in Santorini, Greece.

The Term "Priests"

Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and Orthodox Christians, and most non-Abrahamic religion clergy are called "priests", but clergy in most Protestant Christian denominations, who are doing essentially the same job as priests in Christian denominations that have priests, are usually called pastors or ministers. 

In the case of Episcopalians a.k.a. Anglicans, the linguistic detail is a litmus test in a denomination that does not consider itself to be unequivocally Protestant, for some purposes.

A few Christian denominations, of course, don't have professional clergy, although most are small.

Judaism has a "priest" concept (the Aaronic priesthood, not to be confused with the Mormon religious institution of the same name), but except among Samaritans and some Ethiopian Jews, the term isn't used for its primary professional clergy members who are called "rabbis" (i.e. teachers), and Jewish "priests" are largely a vestigial trapping left over from the sacrificial offering oriented Temple Judaism phase of the Hebrew religion preceding the modern Rabbinic Judaism that arose following the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 CE. Instead, it refers primarily to Jewish laymen who as a hereditary matter has some minor additional religious duties and obligations as part of their ordinary daily life.

As far as I know, there are no religious officials with the title "priest" in Islam. The closest analog to a "priest" in Islam is an Iman, although independent Islamic religious scholars also play an important part in grass roots religious life for Muslims.

Other questions

Is a bishop or archbishop or cardinal or Pope also a "priest" or are those terms mutually exclusive? 

Are monks and nuns ever priests, or are those terms for members of religious holy orders also mutually exclusive? 

Both of those answers, I acknowledge, may be denomination specific. For example, in some religious denominations that are organized democratically, the terms "bishop" and "archbishop" refer to non-clergy who hold governance roles in the denomination.

Are there any Christian denominations that have the clerical title "high priest" or is the title "high priest" used exclusively for non-Christian clergy?

Some Reforms To Address Abuses By Law Enforcement And Corrections Officers (With Meta Note)

Some of these are bigger, and some smaller, they aren't necessarily all mutually consistent.

Hold Institutions Responsible

Institutions will make better personnel decisions and adopt better policies if they have liability for wrongdoing.

* Adapt the "takings" jurisprudence to wrongful deprivations of life and liberty by a government or someone acting on its behalf, without regard to intent or knowledge. Thus, the entity whose collective actions and inactions by its employees and agents caused someone to be wrongfully deprived of their rights to life and liberty would be entitled to full compensatory damages and attorneys' fees without regard to the intent of the person doing so or their good faith. 

For example, suppose an innocent person is incarcerated despite a full trial in which there a no constitutional rights violated. The innocent person is still entitled to full compensatory damages and attorneys' fees. Similarly, an innocent person shot and killed due to a good faith mistake of law enforcement is still entitled to full compensatory damages and attorneys' fees. Similarly, if an innocent person's property is damaged by law enforcement to apprehend someone, the individual suffering the harm is entitled to compensation.

Of course, this would still not allow compensation for justifiable use of force from the person whose actions justified the use of force.

* Make governments vicariously liable under the doctrine of respondiat superior for the civil rights violations of their agents and employees. This is true of all other kinds of torts. In practice, almost all governments indemnify their agents and employees fully even though they are not required to, in these contexts, so it wouldn't have a big fiscal impact. 

Possibly allow governments an affirmative defense to vicariously liability if they immediately suspend an officer, fire them before allowing them to return to duty, and prosecute any crime committed which the government alleges makes the action ultra vires.

Holding Individual Civil Rights Violators Responsible

* Repeal the relatively recent, court created doctrine of qualified immunity.

* Reduce the threshold of intent for personal liability for civil rights violations from intentional conduct to at least negligent conduct. For example, civil rights liability should be imposed if a law enforcement officer failed to use ordinary care to avoid raiding a wrong address, or arresting the wrong defendant.

* Clarify the lack of absolute immunity for prosecutors in connection with investigative roles. Some case law makes this distinction but it is buried in contested case law.

* Narrow justifications for the use of deadly force by law enforcement, and the justifications and processes for use of situations posing an elevated risk of  use of deadly force or abuse such as "no knock" raids.

* Do not allow employers to indemnify individuals for amounts that they are required to pay, routinely bring subrogation claims against civil rights violators. Do not allow the right to subrogation to be waived absent a court approved ex post hearing to show that the settlement with the civil rights violator is justified. Do not allow indemnification and subrogation terms to be tie barred in settlements to the merits.

* Make public pensions available an an asset available to civil right creditors and to governments or their insurers bringing subrogation claims against civil right violators.

Make Circumstances Constituting Sexual Abuse Easier To Prove

* Make it a felony for a law enforcement or corrections officer to have sexual interactions with someone in custody, or someone subject to the officer's jurisdiction with whom the officer does not have an existing relationship while not in custody.

* Prohibit mixed gender cavity searches.

* Narrow the circumstances in which strip searches and cavity searchers are allowed.

Reduce Booking And Arrest And Pre-Trial Incarceration

* Prohibit booking and jail (including related strip searches) for offenses that don't carry incarceration is an ultimate penalty.

* Eliminate incarceration or arrest as an option for most municipal ordinance violations and non-violent petty offenses and misdemeanors.

* Create a civil remedy of removal of someone from a situation that is not a crime, e.g. to defuse a situation, that is not reported as an arrest.

* Compensate people not timely convicted for time incarcerated and for attorneys' fees incurred if not represented by a public defender (or some amount in lieu of actual compensation to be a rough justice approximation) as a matter of course.

* Dramatically curtail the use of cash bonds with the vast majority of cases resulting in pre-trial release on personal recognizance with check in measures, or with pre-trial detention without bond.

* Mandate significantly better conditions in pre-trial detention than detention pursuant to a conviction.

* Make screening and treatment for drug withdrawal routine and mandatory for incarcerated persons.

* Do not incarcerate pregnant people in ordinary jails and prisons. Unless absolutely necessary, defer a sentence of incarceration until after birth and nursing, and when absolutely necessary do so in special medical units and do not require women to undergo labor and delivery in chains.

* Don't put law enforcement officers in schools.

* Don't resort to the criminal justice system for misconduct by children outside extremely limited circumstances set by policies known to school officials and law enforcement.

Get "Bad Apples" Out Of Law Enforcement

* Require law enforcement to have "at will" employment even if unionized or otherwise subject to civil servant protections.

* Authorize the finder of fact (jury or judge as they case may be) to remove a civil rights violator from his or her employment and bar him or her from future positions in law enforcement.

* Develop a national black list of people who have been found liable for serious civil rights violations from serving in future law enforcement positions.

* Develop a national database, a bit like a credit report, of instances in which a court or investigation has found a law enforcement officer to be untruthful. Require it to be shared as part of Brady disclosures in every case in which a law enforcement officer testifies.

* Develop a national database on complaints filed against law enforcement officers and their disposition.

* Disqualify officers with prior domestic violence, other violent crime, animal cruelty, fraud, or public trust crime or ethics code violations or protection orders or courts martial offenses from serving for the next ten years after the sentence is complete.

* Mandatory notification of legal ethics boards for Brady violations by prosecutors (i.e. failures to disclose exonerating evidence to the defense), following findings in court cases.

* Mandatory notification of law enforcement registry following findings if court cases that an arrest or search or seizure was made without probable cause.

* Routinely investigate officers and agencies with a history of complaints and violations. Create an option to place an agency under receivership when its violations cross a threshold.

* Routinely bring federal prosecutions for civil rights violations when unduly lenient local sentences are imposed or there are local acquittals in the face of compelling video, physical, DNA, confession, or other compelling evidence.

* Actively discipline prosecutors and judges for ethical violations showing disregard for civil rights.

Processes

* Vest prosecutions of law enforcement officers in an agency that does not work with and rely on the cooperation of law enforcement officers in the same unit on a daily basis, ideally an independent state agency co-managed with the public defenders office with its own investigators that is also charged with ethics investigations.

* Allow judges and prosecutors (who otherwise have absolute immunity from liability for their conduct) to have civil liability in any matter where the judge or prosecutor is found by an ethical body or criminal prosecution to have committed an ethical violation or crime, with the statute of limitations running from notice to the affecting person that the finding was made in the ethical or criminal case.

* Remand cases that are reversed on appeal to a new judge as a matter of course in all cases.

* Reduce sentences and overturn final convictions as a matter of course when new substantive statute or court rulings invalidate the sentence imposed as a possible sentence.

* Repeal many of the detailed statutory limitations on habeas corpus relief.

Meta Note

This is post 8100 at Wash Park Prophet. I have made 9914 posts at Wash Park Prophet and its sister blog Dispatches From Turtle Island, combined. There are also 34 posts at my incomplete serial novel blog, Wash Park Poet, for a grand total of 9952 posts on the blogger platform.

This blog is the original one and started on July 3, 2005, not quite fifteen years ago, so I have posted, on average, a little less than 13 posts a week for the last fifteen years.

A Wet Graduation Day

My daughter's graduation from college yesterday (Sunday) morning, was virtual, accompanied by a "parade" of friends in cars past our home the previous evening, which was followed by a gather via Zoom with friends.

Yesterday was also remarkably rainy. We had 0.92 inches of rain yesterday in Denver (probably more, since that is likely a DIA reading). While May is usually the wettest month of the year in Denver, isn't a wet place in general, and some years (e.g. 2018) has had below desert levels of precipitation. The average for May is 2.3 inches for the entire month.