The Problem of the Slippery Slope

I have been hearing a lot of slippery slope (or as I so affectionately refer to them, "chicken little") arguments lately, and I have become very dismayed at their effectiveness in changing people's minds. I find these arguments to be not only entirely ineffective and unpersuasive, but, and perhaps more insidiously, completely logically fallacious. See, the fundamental problem with chicken little arguments is that the conclusion does not necessarily follow the premises. These arguments are pure conjecture and speculation, yet, when framed right, sound authoritative. The fact is that slippery slope arguments depend largely on a series of causal assumptions, none of which are ever justified within the argument. Just because something seems to make sense at first blush, does not mean that it makes logical sense.

Another issue I have with chicken little arguments is their utter determinism. The great minds riding on Einstein's coat-tails have essentially eliminated determinism as a viable philosophical model and the simple minds, such as myself, have always refused to ascribe to deterministic philosophies because we refuse to give up the notion of free will. Long gone are the days when a scientist could credibly assert that, if he could freeze time and determine the direction and velocity of every atom in the universe, he could see the future in its entirety. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they depend on deterministic causal chains in order to come true. The slippery slope arguer will assert that if X occurs, then over time, Y will occur. That a whole myriad of other elements of causation and deviation could occur within any segment of the prescribed time span is irrelevant to the slippery slope.

My point here is that we encounter these arguments with increasing regularity in our daily lives. Politicians are some of the most egregious examples of slippery slope appeals to the emotions. So I charge my reader(s) - next time someone tells you that if, for example, we pull our troops out of Iraq then the whole middle east will erupt in violence, ask them why that is? Or if you hear someone say that if we allow the government to trump a liberty in favor of greater security that sooner or later we will be living in a police state, ask why. My caveat here is, please do not respond to the above examples, as I have meant only to exemplify two different slippery slope arguments I have heard a lot of lately (one from each end of the political spectrum, by the way), and in no way mean to undermine either of those arguments, but rather to encourage my reader(s) to question them.

Rule by Adverse Possession (Pt. 1)

For those of you not subjected to reading page after page of dry, dull court cases, there is a concept in the law of property that most people encounter in their first year of law school called "adverse possession." When I first read about this stuff, I was absolutely blown away. It seemed comepletely antithetical to everything I had assumed about ownership and property as it functions in society. You see, adverse possession (at least when grossly oversimplified) works something like this: Let's say this guy Joe owns a piece of land in Alaska, but Joe live in SC. Then this guy Sam, an Alaskan native, wanders onto Joe's Alaskan tract of land and decides he wants to live there. Over a couple of years, Sam builds himself a little hut, a garden, and some other basic improvements, and happily lives on Joe's tract of land for some time. Joe, meanwhile, is stuck in SC and can't get to his Alaskan tract of land. He has no idea Sam is living there. Then one day, Sam's buddy tells him about this thing called "adverse possession." He tells Sam that he can go down to the courthouse and file for quiet title on the land and it will be his. Sure enough, Sam does this and, like magic, the title to the land is in Sam's name. Unbeknownst to Joe, he has lost his Alaskan asset. And all of this, given certain technicalities that must be met, is completely legal (save the time that Sam was trespassing, but that is forgiven after a set period runs and Joe does not eject Sam).

Now, when I first read about this stuff, I was taken aback. How is it that, in America (he said with a thick Texan accent) some vagrant can squat on your land long enough and then it just becomes his? Well, the justification is that Sam is making more efficient use of the land and, because Joe did not care enough about the land to even discover that Sam was there, Sam is more deserving of the title. Whether or not you agree with this concept matters very little. It is settled law in every state in this country (though the requirements vary from state to state).

But I don't want to write this post about adverse possession- at least not the legal variety. Nope, I'm not talking about property law at all. I'm talking about adverse possession at the very top of the American political system. I'm talking about presidential adverse possession. You see, apart from reading about the mundane legal quandaries that people find themselves in, I'm also reading about constitutional law. And recently I have had the distinct pleasure of reading a series of cases dealing with executive power and its interplay with the other branches of government. Most notably, I just read the recent "enemy combatant" cases, which involve American citizens that were picked up either in Afghanistan or while returning from Afghanistan. Of course, these are not ordinary American citizens. These are people who took up arms against our own armed forces and at least appeared to fight for the Taliban. My gut says "hang'em high." Problem is, that my brain just finished processing their court cases, and he's not so sure.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way coming out in support of terrorism or defecting to the enemy, or anything like that. No, that would be way too interesting. Nope, I'm talking about procedure and governmental structure. Things that work in the background of cases like these that have way more impact than a lot of people realize. See, neither of these two cases that I read had anything at all to do with establishing whether either of these guys was a bad guy- that was established well before either of these cases got to the Supreme Court. These cases revolved around whether or not these people would be subject to a trial by jury (as is guarrantied to all citizens of the United States in the Constitution) or to a special military tribunal.

Turns out, the Supreme Court isn't sure. Neither am I. See, as much as I scorn the President's policies, and as much fault as I find in a war on anything in the abstract, I can't seem to countenance being very polite to a couple of guys who decided to fight against their own country. At the same time, I'm a big fan of the Constitution, particularly the part about allowing all citizens to have their day in court. Indeed, James Madison argued that, as long as habeas corpus remained robust and undeniable, that we didn't even need the Bill of Rights. All that could be sorted out in court. And I'm a firm believer that when it comes to things like criminal charges, people deserve all of the protections that the legal system currently affords (at least most of) them. But this brings me back to my gut- these guys could die of gonnorhea and rot in hell as far as I care. So, despite my normal, opinionated tone, I'm going to take a back seat here and admit, I don't know the answer. At least not yet.

(P.S. I know that no one who reads this will have any idea why I included that first part about adverse possession...it will become clear when I post the conclusion to this in a couple of days...but first, I want my reader(s) to tell me what you think about all of this.)

Ann Coulter = Windbag

Nuff said

Big Brother's Census

So, I normally do not look forward to checking my mail. It seems that Publisher's Clearing House forgot their promise that I was the winner of a major prize, and somebody named SCE&G seems to think I owe them $300 a month. That's the only real correspondence I receive via the US Mail, so anyone can imagine my disdain for the mailman (even my dog seems to hate the guy). However, being a good, law-abiding citizen, I perform my requisite daily duty of checking the old inbox.

It seems, though, that Uncle Sam has not caught on to my mailbox blues, and, last week, really kicked it up a notch. See, my
residence has been "scientifically selected" (whatever that means) to participate in the American Community Survey. For those of you who may not be familiar with the survey (a demographic that included myself until last week), it is billed as a supplement to thedecennial census, aimed at gathering information to disseminate to various federal, state, and local entities to help them formulate plans and divert aid. The handy-dandy brochure that accompanied the survey explains that the valuable information I provide will go to government bodies that determine things like police and fire station locations, housing aid, and "to show a large corporation that a town has the workforce it needs."

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for government handouts, at least when they come to me. However, the questions on the
survey raised some serious concerns on my part. For example, I have to provide intrusive information about all the residents of my house, my relationship to those persons, where they work, if they don't work, why not and for how long, as well as about 10 pages of other questions. Now, I'm not going to get on my soap box, wrap myself in an American flag, and spout off truisms about this being a "free country" or anything, I'm not that naive. However, I was curious as to just how the
census bureau justified asking such intrusive questions and requiring their answers under threat of penalties.

Being the responsible law student that I am, I immediately turned to my favorite online legal research site, and began digging. What I found was: 1) theACS has never been challenged in a court of law; 2) the ACS is not specifically sanctioned under any legislative act; 3) the office of the US Comptroller General has written a memo to a Congressional
oversight committee attempting to justify theACS; 4) that memo finds the authority to compel answers to the ACS not in any specific statute, but inferred from the text of at least 2 separate statutes (see 13 USC §§ 141, 193); 5) that those statutes call for supplementary census information only for the purpose of furthering the singular goal of the census; 6) that the singular goal of the census is the apportionment of US Representatives based on population.

So, to recap, save a legal memo put out in defense of the ACS, I couldn't find anything truly justifying its existence, except perhaps some loose and non-legal argument about the need for up-to-date information on US citizens to better divert government monies to those who are in need. My question (or at least one of them) is why is the Federal government collecting all this data for services that are traditionally provided by state and local governments?

Hillary Stumps in Columbia

The Blue South was able to get a correspondant in to the gymnasium at Allen University to see Hillary Clinton deliver her stump speech on Monday, and boy was it anticlimactic. While we generally don't expect a whole lot of substance to speeches this early in the race, we do expect a lot of applause pauses and energy. And that wasn't the case on Monday. Maybe she was just having a bad day, but the speech was about as rousing as a Zanax washed down with a pint of Thunderbird. The town-meeting format wasn't particularly compelling either (and, while we generally oppose scripted questions at those sorts of things, a bit of screening wouldn't have been such a bad idea). Indeed, it was one of Sen. Clinton's questioners that received the loudest applause as he delivered his 10-minute "question" railing in the Iraq war from a Vietnam vet's perspective. In the end, Sen. Darrell Jackson had to cut the guy's mike to give Clinton a chance to speak up.

As far as the speech goes, she hit all the normal highlights. Universal healthcare, Iraq was a bad idea, George Bush sucks, all the standard Democratic stump-speech fare. She also insists on vowing to take the profits of the big mean oil companies (how she plans to do that short of a Nixon-esque "plumber" team, is beyond me). The fact is that Clinton simply isn't a compelling candidate at this point in the race.

Oh yeah, and while we're on the topic of Hillary, the Blue South would like to send a personal boot to the hindquarters of Clinton's operative, Howard Wolfson. This guy is dirty and vicious and about as blatant a liar as we've seen in a long time. We caught him last night on Hardball calling David Geffen Obama's "campaign finance coordinator." Come on, Wolfy, you know that's not true. The fact is that his tactic of spinning Geffen's anti-Clinton remarks (that were fairly meek) into an instance of the Obama campaign utilizing the slash and burn tactics that Obama himself vows to eliminate. Not a bad tactical move, but don't reach too far, or you'll lose any shred of credibility you have left.

Obama-Rama

So I here there's this new guy running for president...what's his name...Oh yeah, Barack Obama. The guy has become as ubiquitous as American Idol in the past year or so. Obama's rise to political stardom began of course with a humble speech at the Democratic National Convention just a few years ago and since then the guy hasn't let up. All the while Obama has been gaining popularity exponentially. This somewhat rare status as a true political superstar has left the Blue South wondering...what exactly is it that makes this guy so freakin' popular?

Certainly Obama's strong oratorical skills and natual charisma play an enormous part in his stardom, but is there any substance behind it all? Obama has taken a strong rhetorical stance against the Iraq War (a fairly popular position these days) and is, in fact, the only Senator who has introduced a De-escalation plan, per the 9-11 commissions recommendations. Obama also talks a lot about healthcare. Its hard to find much he's done on that front nationally, but the word on the street is that while a state Senator for Illinois, Obama did manage to get some healthcare reform passed. Obama speaks of his days as a communtiy organizer in inner-city Chicago, as a civil rights lawyer and law professor, all noble pursuits. But his experience in the national theater is meager and, although he speaks passionately against cynicism (he even wrote a book most audaciously titled "The Audacity of Hope"), who knows what a few years in the D.C. meatgrinder will do to a guy like that.

Not that I'm a cynic but I am skeptical. The system tends to rub off on you. Obama speaks like he's going to enter the system and enact real, sweeping change. The questions are 1) whether that's even possible and 2) whether Obama's message will comport with his actions and policies.

The Troops Behind the Curtain

According to MSNBC news, our very own Congressman John Spratt has spearheaded an effort by the Congressional Budget Office to look into President Bush's proposed troop surge in Iraq. As we all know by now, Pres. Bush vowed to send 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq in an effort to stabilize what many are now calling a civil war in Iraq. What Bush failed to mention, as uncovered by the CBO is that those 21,500 COMBAT troops will require at least as many, if not more, support troops to go to the country. CBO estimated that the effort could involve as many as 48,000 troops in all.

Despite what you think about the war in and of itself, I think we can find it agreeable on both sides of the aisle that politicians like Congressman Spratt have been standing up to the administration and reasserting their own voices in the debate. There are numerous bi-partisan non-binding resolution floating around the Senate that express Congress' reticence to escalate the troop numbers in Iraq. Barack Obama just introduced binding legislation that requires a nearly full US withdrawal (save some special forces) by March of 2008 (naturally this has largely been viewed as a posturing move for Obama given his recent entrance into the presidential race).

I say kudos to Congressman Spratt and all the other politicians who are taking a stand, particularly SC politicians (Lyndsey Graham has acted admirably as well). I'm glad to see leadership emerging in Congress and that our legislative body is once again asserting its own power and not being unquestioningly deferential to an executive office that has sought to expand its power time and time again.