Category Archives: CivilLiberties
Greensboro’s Chief Problem: Transparency in the Hands of the Blogsphere
Via Ed Cone, the consultant’s report (RMA) I posted on earlier is in the wild. An anonymously redacted and posted version is available on Greensboro101.
Guarino has a nice precis of the report – says that the report is “remarkable because of its relatively narrow scope”.
Now, the big question, at least for blogactivists: will Greensboro101 need the services of the Electronic Frontier Foundation?
Greensboro’s Chief Problem: Transparency?
One of the more interesting aspects of Greensboro’s Chief Wray debacle involves a report (the RMA) prepared by outside consultants for internal consumption by Greensboro’s leadership. Questions swirl around both the legality of releasing the full report on the conditions leading to Wray’s firing and the public necessity of those revelations.
A number of GSO bloggers, current ‘blogger and former Council candidate Dave Hoggard for instance, have called for a redacted version to be released. As the Hogg points out,
After reading the whole thing I’m convinced our City Council should call a meeting and vote to release at least the first 31 pages of the report (Section 1). From my non-legal view, that section of the report confirms Bledsoe’s Rhino reported investigations and presents all of the justification needed for the public to understand why David Wray is no longer employed as our Chief of Police.
Others, like Greensboro’s newest ‘blogger (but longtime commenter), The Conservative Alternative, question the assertions that legal action can and will be taken against GSO ‘bloggers publishing the report “in toto”. The grounds for doing so, at least based on her/his analysis, seem pretty shaky.
My interest is more than academic. As a local citizen working on governance issues, the extent to which I can publish or provide documentation of governmental malfeasance hinges on the legal determinations at play in cases like those exposed by Greensboro’s RMA report.
This is one of the reasons I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and their efforts to preserve and protect the online community’s First Amendment rights.
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Anderson’s Question
Chuck Anderson asks how the current system for selecting our judges (by election) might be modified to better serve the public.
Carl Fox and Chuck Anderson were omitted because I ran out of juice for my camera.
And then the last of my batteries went kaput. I apologize to Carl and Chuck for not capturing their last answers of the evening. My notes of their answers:
Fox – appellate selection – most current appelate judges haven’t served as superior judges, electing of judges then have a retention election
Anderson – unlikely we can change the way NC selects judges – legislative actions – how many folks of high quality are discouraged form running? the current system kind of screens out good candidates – don’t want to expose themselves to election – %85 of electorate (Timson) doesn’t know candidates or issues in current election….
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Fox’s Question
Carl Fox starts with the observation that 9 out of 10 people sitting in his court audience are young African-American males.
“What are we doing wrong that is causing so many males to end up in court and what can we do to fix the situation?”
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Stein’s Question
What experience do you have?
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Baddour’s Question
What is the most important thing, if elected, you’ll accomplish over the next 8 years?
Adam Stein talks about how he can only serve about 1/3rd of a term (about 2 years).
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Question #2
What role should political parties play in judge elections?
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Question #1
Importance of community? Your role in the community?
Here comes the judge: The Forum – Openings
Oct. 16th’s UNC Young Democrat Superior Court 15B forum. Candidate openings.
In an effort to clean up the original post and make the page load faster, here’s a playlist version.
Redistricting Referendum: Is Education Enough?
The League of Women Voters has asked me to speak at two forums in the coming weeks as “the opponent” to this referendum (because of my Sept. 2006 Chapel Hill News column “All Quiet on the Election Front”).
Moses Carey will argue for the referendum and I’m supposed to do 5 minutes on my opposition. Of course, I don’t have either the gravitas or the months of background Moses brings to this issue so it’ll be a bit of David and Goliath.
I’m trying to bend my schedule so I can make at least the first forum. More when I know.
Until then, here’s a press release (via Mark Peters and SqueezeThePulp) on the initial education efforts:
October 11, 2006
With upcoming discussions on the District Election Referendum, a web page has been created on the Orange County website to provide basic information. You may wish to consider this as a research source.
The page contains links to the following:
– Simplified wording of the issue
– Questions and Answers
– Maps
– Links to sample ballots (for the exact wording of the referendum)
– Information on educational sessions
The page can be found under “What’s New” from the main Orange County web page or the link below.http://www.co.orange.nc.us/OCCLERKS/DistElectWeb.htm
This link will be updated as additional information arrives.
Within the next week, brochures with much of the same information will be distributed to many public locations.
UNC’s Board of Trustee Roger Perry: You’re Insulted?
UNC trustee and local developer Roger Perry said his sense was that UW-Madison officials essentially tell the community that the university’s mission requires it to do a certain project, and then everyone goes to work on preventing negative impacts, without trying to stop the project in general.
He said he’d like to get to that point in Chapel Hill, and that it can be somewhat “insulting” when someone not connected to UNC says they really aren’t convinced the university needs to do what it says it needs to do.
Perry is insulted when someone outside of UNC questions the whys-and-wherefores of campus development?
What the hell? Near quoting from the authoritarianism playbook, Perry says he likes a community that doesn’t question the diktat of the university – a community that just “deals” with the university’s negative impacts.
Perry appears to long for the day when citizens “shut up” and STOP SAYING they aren’t really convinced about what the university needs to do. My guess? It isn’t the citizen taxpayer questioning the “needs” as much as the citizen taxpayer that questions the “hows” that really inflames his ire.
The obvious sub-text is Carolina North.
The fine residents of our community, the hard-working taxpaying citizens of our State, deserve more than the University’s current flimsy assertions of positive financial, economic and social impacts. From a straight business perspective, for the investment demanded of our community and State, the return is hardly clear.
While I believe the University needs to expand, I have been quite clear that the justifications UNC, to-date, have offered up for Carolina North are, at best, fundamentally weak, at worse, downright disingenuous.
Roger Perry and the rest of UNC’s Board of Trustees absolutely must address the glaring absence of any reasonable, documented, calculable return on investment before I, a single North Carolina citizen taxpayer, will be convinced of the soundness of their plans.
Of course, this is the board Carolina North’s designated quarterback Jack Evans claims can’t handle reading a 15 page list of development principles for Carolina North.
What a trip for the Carolina North boys. Perry’s “shut up” is a fine bookend to Moeser’s reaction to “freelance dissent”.
Deeds, not words shall speak me….
Prolific local blogger Bora Coturnix reveals the back story to the recent CitizenWill post North Carolina Diktat: Thou Shalt Pledge Allegiance.
His son was the young student, armed with the courage of his convictions, who calmly asserted his Constitutional right to not be compelled to affirm that which he doesn’t believe.
North Carolina’s motto, roughly translated, is “Deeds, not words.”
Many of the worst scoundrels of recent history have falsely pledged to support and maintain our Constitution. False pledges of allegiance and broken oaths of fealty are part-n-parcel of their way of doing business. Their deeds, though, contradict their words.
Yet many continue to put faith in mere words. I’ll put my faith in demonstrable deeds (like, as Bora points out, Paul Leubke’s lone dissent).
As famed champion of free speech Supreme Justice Learned Hand notes “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”
In a week so far filled with false patriotic platitudes, it’s encouraging to see the spirit behind the words of our Constitution firmly lodged in the hearts of our youth.
Bora, please thank your son for “walking-the-walk” – putting deeds to words – in pursuit of a little liberty.
ZeFrank’s Simple, Nuanced Message
I’m stuck in a video culture. The immediacy of the message, the ability to project nuance, is quite alluring. Today’s low-cost of creation and dissemination has helped unleash citizen’s voices which otherwise would never be heard.
Yesterday, I featured Keith Olbermann’s Sept. 11th impassioned defense of dissent.
It was a strong, direct, thoughtful yet emotional argument from someone perched on the pinnacle of an old-style media distribution empire (in this case MSNBC).
Today, another thoughtful rumination on Sept. 11th from the incredible ZeFrank, exemplar of the new-style media empire. One guy, one camera – scripting, singing and shooting his simple nuanced message – casting it onto the vast ‘net wasteland to be picked up and celebrated on its merit alone.
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
Keith Olbermann, Sept. 11th, 2006 – on fire:
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft”, or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
…in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men.
“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”