Category: Rights, Justice, & Judgement

Elizabeth Warren wants the FBI to treat big bank CEOs the way they treat Hillary Clinton — Quartz

Warren also wants the Department of Justice’s inspector general to investigate why no charges were forthcoming, and for Comey to testify about why the agency (which Comey has led since 2013) chose not to charge any of those people with crimes related to the crisis.

It seems unlikely that the FBI will comply with Warren’s request; it’s not even clear what kind of investigation was performed. But a rejection would underscore that for all the allegations of Clinton’s coziness to the financial sector, she still faces tougher scrutiny for sending e-mails than bankers have faced for bringing down the global economy.

And time is running out: Prosecutors have just ten years to prosecute many financial crimes.

Source: Elizabeth Warren wants the FBI to treat big bank CEOs the way they treat Hillary Clinton — Quartz

Is Obama’s Drone War Moral? – The Atlantic

The ethics of defensive killing

If the government can’t make a full accounting to its people why it is killing on their behalf, it cannot kill morally.

Source: Is Obama’s Drone War Moral? – The Atlantic

 

Is it morally justified for a government to carry out a policy of targeted killings against proposed threats where we don’t know what the policy is, we don’t know who the targets are, we don’t know what the criteria for the targets are, what evidence they have to carry it out, and what their standards are?

– Sari Kisilevsky, philosopher of law and ethics at Queens College, CUNY

The Fight for the “Right to Repair” | Innovation | Smithsonian

Manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult for individuals or independent repair people to fix electronics. A growing movement is fighting back

The idea of planned obsolescence is nothing new. But the use of “repair prevention” as a method of making products obsolete is growing

Related to all this is the growing problem of e-waste. The inability to repair a product shortens its lifespan and adds to the number of electronics winding up in landfills.

Right to repair advocates blame the manufacturers. Apple, for example, was found to have funded lobbying efforts to kill the Fair Repair bill in New York.

Source: The Fight for the “Right to Repair” | Innovation | Smithsonian

The case for disarming America’s police force — Quartz

America is moving more and more rapidly toward a garrison state, and soon we will not find solace by repeating to ourselves: ‘Ours is a democratic society’

— Paul Takagi, American criminologist, 1974

 

Guns aren’t just a danger in and of themselves. They enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance, rather than one founded on respect, trust and consent. That philosophy affects every police interaction, even those that don’t involve actual shooting.

Source: The case for disarming America’s police force — Quartz

 

I’ve thought that for years. Equipping the majority of police with lethal armaments and military-style dress and equipment (body armor, armor helmets, armored vehicles, black motif, etc.) is not helping them ” to serve and protect” society, which I’d argue is the more fundamental purpose of police than “law enforcement”.
 
We have thousands of laws which should not be enforced by a death sentence, and “resisting arrest” or “being scary” should not themselves be sufficient cause for a death sentence.
 
SWAT, drilled daily in both accurate use of firearms and restraint against resorting to using them too quickly in tense/stressful situations, can keep its guns. They are the ones sent after organized crime and active shooters anyway, not normal officers. Normal police dealing with vehicle traffic, tickets, fines, parole violations by non-violent offenders, etc. do not need to be armed.
 
I could see a special exception for Alaska and Yellowstone National Park officers to be suitably armed against grizzly bears.