Emerging from the Michigan Democratic Convention as the party’s nominee for state attorney general, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton promised to make consumer protection a top priority for the Michigan Attorney General’s office. He also told reporters that his first official act would be to dismiss the state’s pending lawsuit against certain portions of the federal health care reform act.

The federal lawsuit—brought by 20 state attorneys general, including Mike Cox of Michigan—challenges the legality of the “individual mandate,” a provision of Obamacare which requires individuals to purchase health insurance.

The attorney general’s sworn duty is to uphold the law and defend the constitutional rights of citizens. Part of this job entails advocating on behalf of the state’s interests in situations where other entities, including the federal government, undermine state law.

The central question in this lawsuit is whether it is legal for the federal government to force an individual—a consumer, you might say—to purchase a product or service against his will. At this level, the individual mandate is not only a legitimate constitutional question, but it is also precisely the type of cause that a self-styled consumer-advocate attorney general should consider taking up on behalf of Michigan residents.

Popularity: 4% [?]

U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer traveled to Afghanistan with a bipartisan House delegation last week, ostensibly for diplomatic reasons (he met with Gen. David Petraeus and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in some capacity). But the timing makes it hard to ignore the trip’s inevitable function as campaign event: it’s an opportunity to connect with voters stationed in Afghanistan — an opportunity only afforded to incumbents.

A few weeks ago, House Republicans griped about not being allowed to use their Congressional office budgets to purchase flights to the Louisiana to “survey the damage” (of the BP incident). At the time, I wondered about the potentially self-serving motive for these trips.

What expertise do these relatively inexperienced legislators bring to Louisiana, Afghanistan, and other crisis areas? Should taxpayers foot the bill for these thinly-veiled photo ops, especially when they tilt the scales in favor of incumbents?

Popularity: 15% [?]

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy wants to improve the relationship between parents and schools in Detroit. Her answer: Jail sentences for parents who fail to attend parent-teacher conferences. Local officials correlate truancy with juvenile crime and say the proposed ordinance will hold parents accountable.

Instead, they should acknowledge that truancy and violence are crimes in their own right, and that the inability of police and schools to enforce existing laws is not an imperative to define apathy as a new crime and declare open season on non-compliant parents.

Lawmakers should also acknowledge that youth violence is not confined to the realm of truants. In their crusade to rid “the streets” of youth violence and truancy, they may only succeed in relocating that violence to school campuses.

Related posts:

• Daytime curfew rankles homeschoolers and civil libertarians

Popularity: 16% [?]

Michigan’s text messaging ban, which was signed into law on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, takes effect today.

First, some baseless speculation:

1. Why does it cost $100,000 to inform the public of a simple and widely-publicized change in traffic law?
2. Does the fact that the state is placing ads on outdoor billboards along Metro Detroit’s busiest motorways at all defeat the principle of reducing driver distraction?

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America “is dedicated to promoting, protecting and advancing outdoor advertising interests in the US,”  and they maintain a list of top spenders on outdoor advertising (available on their website only to logged-in members). I would wager that government entities and lobbyists who represent them are well-represented in that list.

And now, some practical considerations:

1. To an observer, punching buttons to dial a number looks like texting. Can officers deliver accurate and consistent judgment calls on the spot?
2. Can we expect officers who are at a distance and moving at speeds up to 70 miles per hour to determine whether the device “in the person’s lap” is a cell phone or merely a non-prohibited device such as an iPod, hand-held computer, or GPS unit?
3. How does an officer verify that the driver was texting without confiscating the phone and checking its message history (a likely violation of the driver’s privacy)?
4. Lacking digital evidence, which party will be given the benefit of the doubt if the citation is challenged?
5. Why ban text messaging, but not the use of iPods, GPS units (specifically exempted by the act), hand-held computers, and similar devices?
6. Did members of the Legislature ask these questions?

“And don’t be trying to hide your phone, because that’ll give some police officer a reason to think you’re hiding a weapon.” — Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas

Popularity: 80% [?]

In an interview for David Kilpatrick’s forthcoming book, The Facebook Effect, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg hints that the writing is on the wall for granular privacy controls:

“The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

If I have one positive thing to say about people like Zuckerberg and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it’s that I commend their frankness.

In similar fashion last year, Schmidt warned Google users:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Contrary to what Zuckerberg and Schmidt appear to believe, the idea of separating certain private activities, interests, and social relationships from one’s public persona is not a new vice enabled by the Internet. It’s a long-observed social habit. Ethics guru Michael Zimmer nails it:

Individuals are constantly managing and restricting flows of information based on the context they are in, switching between identities and persona. I present myself differently when I’m lecturing in the classroom compared to when I’m have a beer with friends. I might present a slightly different identity when I’m at a church meeting compared to when I’m at a football game. This is how we navigate the multiple and increasingly complex spheres of our lives. It is not that you pretend to be someone that you are not; rather, you turn the volume up on some aspects of your identity, and tone down others, all based on the particular context you find yourself.

Zuckerberg may wish to challenge that paradigm. But whether or not this social behavior should be encouraged or discouraged merits a fair discussion, not an blanket accusation of duplicitous intent.

See also:

• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
• The “Quit Facebook” Meme and More
• Why Mark Zuckerberg needs to come clean about his views on privacy

Popularity: 15% [?]

Yesterday, at the request of President Obama, Congress approved a $205 million handout to the Israeli government to build a missile defense system. This is in addition to the $2.55 billion in US military aid that Israel received last year. The bill passed the House with a near-unanimous vote.

Only four representatives dared to say no:

• Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D, OH-10)
• Rep. Fortney Stark (D, CA-13)
• Rep. John Conyers (D, MI-14)
• Rep. Ronald Paul (R, TX-14)

Popularity: 11% [?]

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, in what appears to be his first public acknowledgment of Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ death, has tweeted his disgust for Al Sharpton, who will say the eulogy at the 7-year-old’s funeral.

Later, the Republican gubernatorial candidate responded to those who took cheap shots at his misspelling of the word “disgusted”:

“Under any spelling, Sharpton is exploiting tragedy.”

In some way, aren’t we all? Detroit Mayor Dave Bing used the tragedy to call for increased gun control. Sharpton used the tragedy to discuss police misconduct and black-on-black violence. Cox is using the tragedy to disparage a liberal icon. I have used the tragedy to question the way that police raids are conducted.

The tragedy has left everyone asking questions, many of them political in nature. But is it exploitation to ask ourselves what went wrong and what can be improved?

Popularity: 14% [?]

As community leaders assemble the pieces of the tragedy surrounding the death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, they will identify problem areas, but the hard part is to act on them in a lasting way.

Public safety officials are reluctant to admit that these mistakes are not only individual shortcomings, but also institutional failures. In dealing with these crises, leaders may take dramatic action against the individual officer, but merely trivial action against the system itself. It’s time for the law enforcement establishment to shoulder some of the burden and to question, in particular, the necessity of SWAT-style raids in routine police work.

(Published under the Detroit News’ letters on June 10, 2010)

Popularity: 9% [?]

Today, Mayor Dave Bing criticized the attorney who is representing the family of Aiyana Jones, the young girl who was killed during a SWAT-style raid on Detroit’s east side.

“I doubt very seriously if [Geoffrey Fieger] knows much about facts. As an attorney, that’s in this to make money … I think he’s setting that up right now. It’s unfortunate that you would use a tragedy like this to incite the community,” Bing said.

As the saying goes, never let a serious crisis go to waste:

“Why aren’t we enraged about a 15-year-old kid getting killed, a 17-year-old kid … a 69-year woman, a grandmother getting killed,” said Bing. “We’ve got to really take a hard look at gun control.”

Bing is right that we should despise all violence, not just violence by public servants. But shame on him for changing the subject, which is that the Detroit police contributed to the death of a child and probably tried to cover it up. I welcome Bing to explain how gun control will keep police from shooting seven-year-old girls.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Legal experts now say that it’s easier for the federal government to assassinate American citizens than it is to eavesdrop on them:

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.

Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence.

What ever happened to “safety vs. ideals” being a false dilemma, as Obama said in his inauguration address? It now seems inadequate to call the hypocrite-in-chief “Bush Lite” when his administration in fact shows more contempt for due process than his despised predecessor.

See also:

• Organizing on the Issues: Improve Intelligence Capacity and Protect Civil Liberties
• New target of rights erosions: U.S. citizens

Popularity: 13% [?]