Journal - Day 13 04/15/2003 
None
Journals:
When I bring in news clippings of current events, not only do the youths not have time to read them before we start to talk about them, but I also forget the "point". I need to underline the pertinent points in the articles so we can get right to it. I also need to articulate some questions. The best discussion material has all had more questions asked instead of just my opinions.
The students were encouraged to read what they had written since last week about "Free Will". They were to determine if "Free Will" was inalienable, man's rights, or a want. They were to identify the consequences of their stance and then defend their positions.
Since last week, it occurred to me we will deal with "Free Will" when we deal with determinism. These students have not even heard about determinism yet, much less contemplated the consequences of such. Letting them talk about "Free Will" for a little bit gave them a slight introduction, or at least an opportunity to take a position devoid of having to reconcile determinism into their thinking.
Again, we did not bother to grill anyone over much for their positions - at least overly much.
We did not get to the Rights as put out by the United Nations. That will be for next week. However, I did pass our a copy of a Summary of the United Nations Rights with all my mark ups. I asked the students to write down Yes / No next to every proposed Right as if it were inalienable or not. I also asked they look over the questions or statements I had adorned in red for them.
We'll see if they bring the Summary back. It is very long so I would rather not print an additional copy.
(I did not get to the journal for days too late and so my notes are rather sketchy. Oops on my part. Worse yet, after having done what I could remember, it crashed when saving.)
Questions Asked:
Discussions:
Go over the Right to Choose issue.
Generally speaking, most all the students believed we each have a right to choose our ourselves. This would be "Free Will".
One student said something which was well put. If the right of free will were taken away from us, we would naturally yearn for the ability to express our own "Free Will". What the student had done was postulate a test for inalienable rights.
Inalienable Rights Test:
If we have never experienced a "right", either personally or seen it in others, and yet we yearn for the "right", then the "right" is inalienable.
We reviewed 4 current issues.
A New Generation Gap - Abortion and Our Children
A social scientist observed that young people today no longer see abortion as a "rights" issue, but as a "moral, ethical issue."
They're explicitly rejecting that so-called "right."
Cities, property owners face off over bill to limit eminent domain
We had a very fiery debate with this one. We first had to learn what eminent domain was and how it is used. We discussed the consequences of not having eminent domain.
We eventually had to put it to a vote.
"In it necessary to have Eminent Domain?".
We were divided on this. Some felt without Eminent Domain, no worthwhile project could be accomplished because the last person would hold up the project for financial reasons.
Some felt everyone had their price and Eminent Domain stomps on a persons right to own property.
"If Eminent Domain is legal, should there be any restrictions on it's use."
This ran the course of basic guidelines to down right restrictions in it's use. About the most telling way to tell how Eminent Domain would be restricted where the student stood on the next question.
"Should Eminent Domain be used for Economic reasons?"
Not everyone agreed it should be. Those who believed Eminent Domain should not be used for economic reasons sort of liked a law to make a government body unable to sell land condemned under Eminent Domain for 10 years. Those who believed Eminent Domain was a valid economic tool disliked the 10 year before resale law.
Town Seeks to Ban Political Smirks
"Do not use body language or other nonverbal methods of expression disagreement or disgust,"
This issue touches what Ravi calls, "Disagreeing without being disagreeable." Christ told us to "Hate the sin and love the sinner." Fair enough, but how do we go about doing so?
The students did not believe it was possible to disagree without a smirk or whatever. instead of refraining from it, you can imagine we got a lot of smirks hither and yon.
Rule by coercive court decree
Judges became legislators in response to their "public" -- class action attorneys.
...law in the United States is no longer accountable to the people, because state and local governments have lost both legislative and administrative powers
the basic premise of democracy by decree is that government can be made more compassionate only if judges impose their will on elected officials
This bothered the students very much. How could a judge do something which was so blatantly illegal? One student hit up on it. If you are perceived to have the power, then you can do as you wish.
U.S, District Court judge has banned the sale of a book by ruling that a tax-protesting author cannot sell his book attacking the legality of the federal income tax. He banned the author from so much as lecturing on the subject.
[Can a judge be taken to court for Contempt of the Constitution?
Are there no class action lawyers to might take the judge on for trampling on our freedom of speech?
Is this not covered under freedom of speech?]
Assignments:
None
Plan for Next Week:
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued
by Chuck Colson
As part of her coursework in Persuasive Speech, Afton Dahl had to make a presentation about a controversial issue. Dahl, a sixteen-year-old sophomore at Red Wing High School in Minnesota, chose abortion.
"I think it would be better," she told her classmates, "to overturn Roe v. Wade."
Dahl was not just repeating what she heard in her pro-life, Christian home. In fact, her remarks came as a shock to her thoroughly pro-choice mother. But they are a hopeful sign that pro-life arguments have not fallen on deaf ears.
Dahl was not the only person in her class to make a pro-life presentation. As Dahl's teacher, Jillynne Raymond, told the New York Times, the "majority" of her students are pro-life. This comes as a real surprise in Red Wing, which voted for Al Gore in 2000. One resident described herself as "shocked" at the pro-life sentiment among the town's kids and asked, "Where do these kids come from?"
The answer: They are just kids from Red Wing whose attitudes are consistent with national trends. Among young Americans, support for the pro-choice position has been dropping for the past decade. In 1993, 48 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds polled by the New York Times agreed that "abortion should be generally available to those who want it." Today, that number is down to 39 percent. A social scientist observed that young people today no longer see abortion as a "rights" issue, but as a "moral, ethical issue." That's good news.
And not surprisingly, abortion-rights advocates are trying to explain away these findings. Some argue that young women, never having "faced a situation where they couldn't get an abortion," take the right to abortion for granted. But they're not taking it for granted. They're explicitly rejecting that so-called "right."
An even more desperate pro-abortion explanation is that the shift is due to sex-ed programs stressing abstinence that "demonize abortion." In this conspiratorial account, children are being indoctrinated behind their busy parents' backs. As one pro-choice parent told the Times, "An anti-choice critter [jumped] out of my son's backpack and [ran] around my house." Really?
I suppose thinking that he has been brainwashed is easier than admitting that he thinks that you are wrong. But that is what is happening. When Dahl told her classmates that "the baby's heartbeat starts at around twelve to eighteen days," she demonstrated that our arguments have taken hold. Likewise, when her classmate said that the abortion issue is "more about the baby's rights than the woman's rights," we can see that our efforts to shift the terms of the debate have borne fruit.
What's happening in Red Wing and across the country is a reminder to the pro-life side that being in this battle for the long haul pays off. Just because one generation of women regards Roe as sacrosanct does not mean that we cannot reach their children with rational, moral arguments.
What's happening in Red Wing should inspire Christians to take advantage of groups like Stand to Reason, an excellent apologetics ministry specifically equipping kids to understand and defend pro-life arguments—arguments that are creating a new generation gap, one in which being young means choosing life.
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued
by Alia Beard Rau, Elvia Diaz and Tom Zoellner
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 9, 2003 12:00 AM http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0409eminentdomain09.html
It has become a battle between cities' traditional right to clear the way for new stadiums and shopping centers, and property owners who say enough is enough.
Rep. Eddie Farnsworth's bill to limit powers of eminent domain has produced two visions of the future of Arizona.
As the cities would have it, it's a world gone bad: Tempe's Apache Boulevard will be handed back to the prostitutes and crime-ridden bars. Lower-income Yuma residents will be forced to remain in filthy trailer parks. A Prescott shopping mall will sit vacant.
[Where will the residents go once they are evicted from their filthy trailer parks? Cardboard boxes? Into another neighborhood? Homeless shelter?]
But to property owners, House Bill 2308 simply means cities couldn't push the little guy around any more: No more forcing one person to sell his property to make someone else rich. Light-rail projects would still move ahead, as would other important public endeavors.
"Municipalities simply want to maintain absolute authority to take away private property and that's wrong," said Farnsworth, a Republican from Gilbert. "Abuses are rampant and we must stop them."
This week, city officials from throughout the Valley failed to reach a compromise with Farnsworth on his bill that would make it much harder for cities to condemn private property to make way for redevelopment.
The legislation already cleared the House. Now, it faces a showdown in the Senate, where Farnsworth plans to roll the dice, hoping his measure will pass but not knowing whether he has enough support.
City representatives believe the bill could affect the quality of life for people throughout Arizona. Cities would have to wait until 85 percent of the area to be redeveloped has deteriorated into slum and blight conditions before eminent domain could be used to condemn property. If a city is condemning an individual property, the same formula applies. In both cases, cities could not sell the property for 10 years.
The bill would not affect the ability to use eminent domain for government projects like light rail, a new fire station or a freeway. But city officials consider that small consolation.
"The cities' landscape would change dramatically without eminent domain," said Kevin Adam, legislative coordinator for the League of Arizona Cities and Towns. "The bill would hamper the cities ability to redevelop key areas such as Phoenix downtown."
Since 1973, Phoenix has designated at least 16 areas for development and used eminent domain, including the Sunnyslope Village Center in north-central Phoenix. Both Phoenix and Tucson will likely use eminent domain to try to create quality growth on the edges of low-income housing developments.
Tempe is trying to put an office and residential complex on a trash-filled, contaminated 200 acres southeast of the junction of Loops 101 and 202.
"Without eminent domain, we wouldn't be able to clean up the mess or deal with the environmental contamination," said Tempe principal planner Neil Calfee.
He said passage of the bill would halt the progress made along Apache Boulevard, where the city has shut down three bars and is in the midst of a lawsuit to condemn homes and build new townhouses.
Eric Emmert, the vice president of public affairs for the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, paints a grimmer picture of Arizona's future if the bill passes.
"It could mean the degradation of an area, the degradation of property values and declining neighborhoods and businesses," he said.
Yuma city officials say they need condemnation powers to clean up six trailer parks in the distressed Carver Park neighborhood. Yuma wants to buy the land, tow away crumbling and unsafe trailer homes, pave the roads, construct new homes on the lots and then deed them over to the present tenants. If the bill passes in its present form, Yuma would have to wait 10 years before deeding the homes over.
"The only way we can assist them is to acquire them," said Bill Lilly, neighborhood services manager. "Without eminent domain, our hands are tied. The property owner knows what we're doing and is going to shoot the price way up. And we're not going to pay a million and a half bucks for something that should cost $300,000."
Downtown Safford needs more parking to help ensure the continued health of Main Street, said Mayor Van Talley, and the only way to do it may be to take blighted storefronts off the street.
Prescott has been trying to renovate the nearly dead Ponderosa Plaza Mall, but one fabric shop refuses to sell. The city could still condemn it, but then would have to hold onto it for a decade under the terms of the Farnsworth bill.
"Its highly unlikely Wal-Mart is going to wait 10 years," Prescott City Attorney John Moffitt said. "There's been a lot of talk about the government throwing people out of their houses, but this is only the second time we've done this (in recent memory). And we don't take it lightly."
But those who support Farnsworth's bill say cities have abused their power of eminent domain, using it to move wealth from one person to another.
The supporters say the measure simply protects individual property rights and forces cities to find other ways of acquiring land for private developers.
[Are there other possible ways of aquiring land? What might they be? How about exchanging the land ownership into voting stock into the endeavour of whomever is going to hold and use the land? Would that be a win / win or a potential liability issue for one or more parties? Which parties?]
Randy Bailey, who is fighting Mesa's attempt to demolish Bailey Brake Service for an $8 million retail and office complex, says the cities are exaggerating.
"I don't think this bill will keep the cities from being able to do legitimate projects and take care of the slum and blight conditions," Bailey said. "It will just shut down the good old boy deals."
Right now, cities can use eminent domain in designated redevelopment areas.
Cities must pay property owners fairly.
If property owners believe the offer to be unfair, they can take the matter to a Superior Court judge or jury.
Institute for Justice Vice President Clint Bolick, who is representing Bailey, called it nonsense that the bill would keep cities from redeveloping.
"Many cities around the country have revitalized themselves without using eminent domain," he said.
"A good tax and regulatory climate is worth much more to relocating businesses than a promise of corporate welfare."
Bolick said cities have abused the power so brazenly that he believes a bipartisan majority will pass some form of the bill.
"It means once again an Arizonan's house will be his or her castle," he said.
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued
http://news1.iwon.com/odd/article/id/317020|oddlyenough|04-09-2003::08:50|reuters.html
Apr 9, 8:40 am ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A raised eyebrow, loud guffaw, smirk or other facial expressions could all be banned in future political debate under rules proposed for the city council of the Californian city of Palo Alto.
In a bid to improve civility in the town's public discourse, a committee on the city council has spent hours debating guidelines for its own behavior.
"Do not use body language or other nonverbal methods of expression disagreement or disgust," a new list of proposed conduct rules reads.
Another rule calls for council members to address each other with formal titles followed by last names, formality not always practiced in laid-back California.
"I don't want to muzzle my colleagues," councilwoman Judy Kleinberg, who headed the committee that drafted the rules, told the San Jose Mercury News. But "I don't think the people sitting around the cabinet with the president roll their eyes."
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued
Paul Craig Roberts
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/9/35841.shtml
While American neoconservatives use "the war on terror" to impose democracy on the Middle East, two New York Law School professors urge us to rescue democracy here at home. In a newly released book from Yale University Press, "Democracy by Decree," Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod show how the plaintiff's bar and judges have used consent decrees to take government away from elected officials.
The two law professors know of what they speak. The careers of both as "public interest" attorneys contributed to creating the situation that they now deplore.
Rule by coercive court decree originated with the public school desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education. Prior to this case, reform relied on persuasion, a balancing of contending interests and appeals to public opinion. Brown inaugurated a new era of reform coerced by class-action lawsuits and judicial decrees.
The result, according to Sandler and Schoenbrod, is that law in the United States is no longer accountable to the people, because state and local governments have lost both legislative and administrative powers. Schools, welfare agencies, prisons -- indeed, practically the entire range of state and local public institutions -- are actually controlled by attorneys and judges, not by governors, mayors and the voting public.
A number of constitutional and political developments combined to create an environment that enabled judicial coercion to push aside persuasion and the legislative balancing of interests. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution provided for the direct election of senators and terminated the constitutional function of the U.S. Senate, which was to protect the states from a central government overlord.
The New Deal destroyed the "enumerated powers" limit that the Supreme Court had placed on Congress' authority. The rise of national interest groups and cause-oriented politicians destroyed the political party coalitions of federal, state and local legislators.
In 1963, the Ford Foundation funded the first public interest law firm. By 1967, the federal Office of Economic Opportunity had funded 300 local legal services organizations and a dozen national law reform centers.
Numerous private "public interest" law firms sprung into existence. Many, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Children's Defense Fund, are now household names. Over a wide range of issues, reform moved from legislative bodies to the courtroom. Judges became legislators in response to their "public" -- class action attorneys.
The reform revolution is so complete, write Sandler and Schoenbrod, that lawyers today are enculturated with the belief that compassion and justice are achieved only through judicial coercion. The revolution gave public power to private attorneys, who are able to impact citizens' lives more forcibly than the people's elected representatives.
Sandler and Schoebrod write that "the basic premise of democracy by decree is that government can be made more compassionate only if judges impose their will on elected officials." The reform revolution has destroyed the separation of powers and the American model of democracy.
Sandler and Schoenbrod offer measures that they believe would restore politically accountable law, but American democracy might be too far gone. The will to fight has departed from legislative bodies, and the American people are distracted and uninformed. Legislators, mayors and governors have learned that they can avoid making political enemies by letting judges decide divisive issues.
Judges are so accustomed to legislating in response to interest groups that they routinely set aside democratic outcomes. Legislating from the bench was once confined to high-profile state or regional desegregation rulings. It now invades local zoning ordinances. Recently in Walton County, Fla., a local judge, William F. Stone, legislated justice for a developer by throwing out the county's compatibility standards for real estate development.
The standards barred the developer from erecting a multi-story condo building in a community of single-family houses. The judge dismissed the compatibility requirement on the basis of his personal opinion that the compatibility standards were "vague" and that the county commissioners had used "subjective judgment" when they voted down the developer's project.
Local attorneys believe that Stone over-reached his judicial powers. The county commission had followed the recommendation of the county planning commission, which after a public hearing rejected the project on compatibility grounds. At the public hearing, the local community had presented extensive photographic evidence of the existing character of the community and argued convincingly that the proposed project would so alter the character of the neighborhood that the definition of compatibility itself would change.
The only issue was whether high-density condos are compatible with a unique community of low-density single-family homes. What the public wanted and law provided meant nothing to the judge, accustomed as judges are to ruling like Roman emperors.
If we export our broken-down version of democracy to Iraq, Iraqis might see similarities between their old and new governments.
Dr. Roberts' latest book, "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," has been published by Prima Publishers. Copyright 2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued
NewsMax.com http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/14/151041.shtml
Monday, April 14, 2003
In what could be a first, a U.S, District Court judge has banned the sale of a book by ruling that a tax-protesting author cannot sell his book attacking the legality of the federal income tax. He banned the author from so much as lecturing on the subject.
[Can a judge be taken to court for Contempt of the Constitution?
Are there no class action lawyers to might take the judge on for trampling on our freedom of speech?
Is this not covered under freedom of speech?]
Federal District Court Judge Lloyd D. George granted the government's motion to ban author Irwin Schiff from selling and distributing his book "The Federal Mafia: How The Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes."
The book, which Schiff says was first published in 1990, has sold more than 75,000 copies and can be found in most libraries.
On his Web site Schiff says the banning of his book was based on a hearing in which no government witness testified under oath or could be cross-examined by him. Schiff noted that Judge George banned the book without even reading it, and apparently saw it for the first time at the hearing on March 10.
Schiff charged that the government's claims, on which the temporary restraining order was based, are a "tissue of lies from start to finish."
"I really look forward to cross-examining any Government witness that is prepared to testify under oath, at the preliminary hearing, that even one phrase in The Federal Mafia is not legally correct," he wrote.
He said the judge banned the book because it told how to file his "zero" return, a type of income tax return he says he has filed for more 10 years without legal consequences. Schiff says he is still open and operating his Las Vegas business, Freedom Books, and is free to sell his other books, such as "How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes," a 1982 best seller, and "The Great Income Tax Hoax," published in 1985.
Schiff is the author of several other books on the economy, inflation, the Federal Reserve, Social Security and is writing a book titled "The Repeal of the Income Tax: And How a Criminal Judiciary Continues to Enforce It." He said the book would attempt to show why and how the income tax, passed in 1913, was repealed by Congress when it adopted the 1954 Code, which defines income as consisting only of corporate profits.
Besides banning the book, Judge George's order even bars Schiff from giving lectures on the income tax. As a result, he had to call off a seminar-workshop he was planning for March 29 and 30.
When his attorney, Noel Spaid of San Diego County, Calif., asked the government's attorney, Evan Davis, if Schiff "could lecture on the history of the income tax," Davis responded, "Attorney to attorney, this is too ripe for him." Spaid told Schiff that this was lawyer talk that meant Schiff could not give such a lecture without violating George's order.
Day 13 - Chapter 5 - The Reformation - Continued