Herbivore men and national gender imbalance

There's a growing phenomenon in Japan. A large fraction of Japanese men have no interest in sex. I wouldn't care to speculate why right now, but there's one particular consequence I'm interested in: there are a lot of Japanese women who will never have a husband.

Other countries, notably China and India, have more men than women due to selective abortions. That's a lot of men who will never have a wife.


Japan and China don't get along well for... historical reasons. But Japan and India seem to do fine. Maybe we should hook them up?

That would be an interesting world.

Polio eradication

Humans change the world. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. One change is extinction of a species, a change that cannot be undone.

Think about what it means for an animal to go extinct. Say, elephants. If elephants went extinct today, your children or grandchildren will grow up in a world without elephants. They will never see one, ever, no matter where they go or what they do. A significant experience will be denied them; a choice will be denied them. So even if you don't care about elephants in themselves, won't you please think of the children?

Disease eradication is the opposite. By eradicating a disease, mankind makes a mark on the planet for the rest of time. Most things people do will eventually crumble. But as bad as the extinction of an animal is, extinction of a disease is the antithesis. It is a permanent, unalterable improvement in the state of the world. Disease eradication is one of the greatest achievements of man. And it only happens because of vaccines. If anyone ever tells you vaccines aren't safe, point out the alternative.

Only two diseases have ever been eradicated, and of the two, only smallpox affects humans. But we're making progress on several others, and polio is at the top of that list. Forty years ago there were 50,000 reported cases of polio in the world. The last few years, there have been under 500. There are only three countries with endemic polio (meaning it's transmitted within the country, not imported), and the number of endemic cases is down to under 150. Now, the game isn't over; as long as there are endemic populations and large groups of unvaccinated people, there can still be outbreaks, like happened this year in Somalia. But the vaccination will continue. Within the next decade, polio will be dead.

And then nobody, anywhere, will have polio again. Ever. This will never happen again:

 

Think about that.

In the same period of time, you can expect to see an end to guinea worm, and yaws may not be far behind. Then malaria and the measles.

Quackcast

I've been really enjoying listening to the Quackcast. It's a dry, sarcastic analysis of alternative medicine, complete with explanations of the available medical literature on each subject. Full of great references and in-jokes. It's not "fair and balanced". It's science, and it's all about data. If that's how you prefer your medicine to be done, this is a great podcast. The guiding quote sums it up nicely:

“Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.”

-- Thomas Jefferson (on a different topic)

Here's the summary of my listening so far. If you don't want to take my word for it (and you shouldn't), please, listen to the podcast! The data is quite convincing. Unless, of course, you don't make decisions based on data, in which case, why are you reading this blog?

• Acupuncture (without electricity) is ineffective and dangerous.
• Chiropractic is sometimes ineffective and dangerous. Now, chiropractors are a varied lot. Some are perfectly reasonable and helpful. I'm not saying you shouldn't see a chiropractor. But if you're going to, make sure you find a sane one. The more reality-challenged ones think that manipulating your spine can cure your allergies. Some reject germ theory, of all things, which means they may not clean tables or equipment. Equipment used to give colinics. You may now run screaming in terror.
• Homeopathy is hysterically ineffective.
• Vitamin C megadoses do not prevent colds, or reduce their intensity or length to any useful degree.
• Probiotics might do something, but not as typically sold.
• The anti-vaccine movement doesn't have a leg to stand on with any argument they've ever made. All they accomplish is getting children maimed and killed.
• Things sold as an "immune system booster" really just provokes an immune response, like inflammation. This does not make you more likely to fight off infection, and it may actually contribute to cardiovascular disease.

The Science-Based Medicine blog, often referenced in the Quackcast, also looks great, but I haven't gotten into it in depth yet.

Gut bacteria

In the news recently has been a lot of talk about gut flora. We all have a lot of different kinds of microorganisms living in our intestinal tracts, naturally and normally. Without them, we don't process food like we should. Now, if the populations of one bacteria or another are reduced, they might grow back. But what if every last one of some kind is dead?

What happens if your body gets so out of whack (technical term!) that some of your bacteria populations die out entirely? Like by taking a lot of antibiotics to deal with another problem? Or maybe by a really horrible diet? (Maybe?) Your digestive system would start behaving differently, and those bacteria would never return. Maybe this would explain why it's harder to lose weight than it was to put it on!

Obviously I'm just making stuff up. But it's an interesting concept.

Harmonizing Genesis with a very old universe

I'm going to throw an odd proposal out there. Please note that I'm not saying I believe this. Neither am I saying I don't. I'm throwing it out there as an idea for people to chew on, because I find this manufactured fight between science and the Bible to be tiresome, unnecessary, and destructive, and I want to find a way past it. Consider it an amusing idea. If it bothers you, for either religious or areligious reasons, feel free to forget you ever saw it. (Because, hey, you are.) This is intended to help, not to cause difficulty.

The Book of Genesis describes the creation of the world. It describes the first man and woman and their descendents. Genesis presents an unbroken genealogy from the creation until the time of Joseph, complete with the ages of each individual. From that point, further books of the Bible give a sequence of later events, some of which can be correlated to outside historical references. Taking all those things together, we can build a timeline that shows about six thousand years have passed since the creation of the world, give or take a minute.

So why does the world look so much older than that?

Now, let's not start with any prejudice. Momentarily forget you have beliefs on this matter, and break the problem down as if you were seeing it for the first time. As I see it, there are three main possibilities, each with two sub-possibilities. In no particular order:

1) Deceptively old Earth. The world just looks old, and really isn't. God made the world six thousand years ago, in such a way that it looks old.
1a) God was unable to make the world any way he wanted. Limited God.
1b) God made the world exactly as he wanted; God wanted us to think the world older than it is. Deceptive God.

2) Young Earth creation science. The world doesn't look old at all, we're just modeling it wrong.
2a) Our observations are in error, so our model of them is incorrect. Bad data.
2b) Our observations are correct, but our model is incorrect. Bad interpretation.

3) Standard scientific model. The world really is much, much older than 6,000 years.
3a) We're misunderstanding the Bible, and it is not telling us that the world is 6,000 years old. Flawed reading.
3b) We understand the Bible correctly, it is telling us that the world is 6,000 years old, and the Bible is simply wrong. Flawed text.

Possibility 1 is, definitionally, outside the realm of science. Science deals with patterns in nature, identifying them and extrapolating from them. Miracles break those patterns, so science can't speak about them one way or another. If God made the world look old, presumably he did a good job and we wouldn't find any evidence. It's no different than the idea that you were created five minutes ago with a few decades worth of memories; it's possible, but it's also untestable, so you may as well not worry about it and move on.

Possibility 2 is a fine place to start. Science is all about checking your work and challenging theory. Anybody who tells you otherwise is doing it wrong! But that same principle requires us to admit when the weight of data is against the challenge. Given all the evidence, any model that allows for the universe as we observe it to be only six thousand years old becomes unnecessarily (and more important, untestably) complex.

For example: if the universe is that young, why can we see stars more than six thousand light years away? That light shouldn't have gotten here yet. What does that imply? Either the speed of light is variable under circumstances we haven't observed, or the universe is a millionth the size we think it is. The former, since it's unobservable, is not science. For the latter to be true, all our models of how stars work has to also be thrown out, and we don't have a good replacement model for that either. Either way, we're making a model more complex than it needs to be to explain observations, just to make it fit an unobserved data point.

(Note that I'm not saying you can't believe this, or anything else. I'm just saying it's not science at that point.)

So if we want to stay in the realm of science, we're left with possibility 3. And if we want to maintain a belief in Biblical inerrancy (which is my preference), we're left with 3a. So now we're not talking about science; we're talking about altering our understanding of a text in order to keep it consistent with observed fact. This has been called "spin" before, in a derogatory fashion, or an exercise in rationalization. Call it what you will (as long as you don't call it science). We're talking about complicating our model of a text to maintain its consistency with our scientific model of the universe, and there is nothing wrong about that endeavor.

Because a model of the text is what we have, right? What the text actually says, and what we understand it to mean, are two different things. The Bible never says "The earth was created 3528 years before the deportation to Babylon" or anything like that. That's just a conclusion we can reach if we start with the text and make certain assumptions. What I'm asking is, what are those assumptions? And are there any we can do without?

The primary assumption is that there's no gap in the timeline between creation and some other correlated event. Our first actual datable event is the age of Adam when Seth was born (130 years). But is Adam's age actually dated from the creation of Earth? Or is it perhaps dated from the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, when death entered the world, at which point age has meaning? If the latter, we have some discontinuity. That gap is where I'll insert my imagined harmonization.

Consider how Genesis describes creation after the Fall: pain, a battle to survive, and eventually, death. The world is cursed, and everything in the world will eventually die. In other words, the world as we know it.

Before the Fall? None of that. No death. No pain in childbirth. A world utterly unlike this one in every way.

So what if it wasn't this world?

Here's the idea: God creates, exactly as described in Genesis. He creates Eden, a perfect place without death or disease. Maybe it's not unlike Earth; maybe it's a place with different physical laws; maybe it's all completely aphysical and indescribable in any terms we have. All that is beside the point. God creates Man, somewhere not here, and Man exists in Eden in harmony with God for some interval.

Eventually, Man sins, and can no longer live in that world. Man dies; life as he has known it is over. But rather than eternally and completely terminate Man, God gives Man another place to live. God creates an entirely new universe, this new one based on death and decay ("the ground is cursed for your sake"), and inserts Man into it. God, being outside time, sees the entirety of this new creation, from beginning to end, and finds what He judges to be the best place and time to insert Man: a planet covered with water orbiting a yellow star, filled with all sorts of life, about fifteen billion years after the start of the new creation. Why there? Because on this life-filled planet has evolved a group of particularly smart tool-using hominids. Man, as he was created, is no more. But what he was, his soul, is now inspired into these creatures, to live and die here in this decaying universe.

This is obviously unorthodox, but is there anything about it that's problematic? It can't have scientific issues, because it's not talking about patterns in nature at any point. We're talking about something totally unobservable. And all of this is clearly within the power of God. The only change to the typical scriptural interpretation is the idea that Eden didn't exist somewhere on Earth, but was some other domain of existence. Which, frankly, makes a lot of things more sensible anyway. (Also, as a bonus, all that implied incest in early generations is done away with.)

Now, this proposition has interesting consequences. First, it implies there's something interesting about humans biologically that makes us unique for God's purposes. Presumably our intelligence, since we're not good at much else compared to other animals. This implies that the ability to think is, for whatever reason, a trait God finds desirable for us to have. God gave us big brains, and intends for us to use them! (Maybe just because there are billions of us, and without intelligence there's no way to feed that many? But that's way into speculative territory.)

Second, it implies an answer to the Fermi Paradox. Why do we see no other intelligent communicating races out there in the big vasty nothing? Because the universe was created for us. Maybe we're the first, or the only there will ever be. Or maybe not. But it's a possible answer.

Third, Man died. God told man that on the day he touched the tree, he would die, which is a common point of criticism leveled at Genesis; clearly Adam survived after that day. Under this model, that death is very literal. Man died, his life ended, and this is his afterlife. (In fact, the world bears a striking resemblance to some ideas of purgatory.) Which itself raises an interesting question: if Adam and Eve had a pre-life with God which ended because of their sin, were they the only ones? Or did the same thing happen with every single one of us? Is the story of Eden not a story of us collectively, but of every individual human to ever live? Is it a story that has played out billions of times? Did I, personally, live in the presence of God, and sin? Was I thus expelled from the presence of God into this thinking piece of animate meat?

I have no evidence, but at first glance I find that idea comforting. Because that would mean I'm not being punished for the sin of my remote ancestor. I'm being punished for my own sin. The concept of original sin becomes quite specific. If I hadn't sinned, I wouldn't be alive on Earth. But again, way into speculative territory.

This is all just one idea. Like I said, I'm not sure I believe it. But I'm reasonably sure it works as an idea. And if I can come up with one way to keep the Bible literally true and inerrant, while maintaining a scientific worldview, there have to be others. If I can come up with one way, God can come up with many, many more. I'm only interested in demonstrating that it's possible.

So can we get past the science vs. Bible arguments? Please?

Structuring code: setting vs. evaluating

A while back I was explaining my code to a coworker, so as to reduce our bus factor. We got into a discussion about the way I structured my code. My code tends to be more like this:

while(1){
     //read the inputs
     input1 = pin4
     input2 = pin5

     //define the mode
     if (input1) mode = CHARGE;
     else if (input2) mode = BOOST;
     else mode = STANDBY;

     //define outputs
     if (mode == CHARGE) output1 = 1;
     else output1 = 0;

     if (mode == BOOST) output2 = 1;
     else output2 = 0;
}

His code tends to be more like this:


//handle first mode
if (input 1){
     mode = CHARGE;

     output1 = 1;
     output2 = 0;
}
//handle second mode
else if (input 2){
     mode = BOOST;
     output1 = 0;
     output2 = 1;
}

The two are semantically identical, but the way you get from A to B is totally different.

In essence, mine is structured around making sure that any given variable is only set in exactly one place in the code wherever possible. Obviously there are some cases where that can't be, like the results of long strings of sequential calculations. But in general, I find that this makes my code much easier to debug. If something is wrong with the value of one particular variable, that problem can only exist in exactly one place. And if I need to insert intermediate flags between one variable and another, it's much easier if there's only one place to do that.

I'm not sure how I got to this point. I didn't used to program this way. I think I learned it from lots of VHDL pain, back in the day. I wonder if there are names for these two approaches to structuring one's program. I'd be interested in reading more about the subject.

Review: Man of Steel

The short version: Man of Steel is an excellent attempt at a Superman movie.

First, the world-building. Krypton is more fully realized here than I've ever seen it. The series of events leading to Kal's departure for Earth is coherent, and efficiently tells us how Krypton came to its final state. The fights at the beginning give us a clear sense that this is a world that's dying, not just eight guys standing around in a crystal chamber. And the history Jor-El gives us later tells us something of why Krypton, the best of Krypton, was worth saving. Krypton as a world makes Jor-El's motivations believable.

Krypton as a world also makes Zod's motivations believable. This is not a moustache-twirling characature out for world domination because powah!!! Zod is a man who has lost his home, and is desperate, not for revenge, but to save what he can. Zod's motivations here are not self-serving, and if his priorities were just a little different he'd be a hero. This is a man with no choice; this is the kind of man that results when you take away choice. Zod is, essentially, a machine. But you'd never know it from the acting, which is top-notch all the way through.

Earth is also built as a believable world, particularly by Clark's interactions with humans. Through him we see people, all of them, as a mixture of good and bad. From the military to Pete Ross, nobody's a generic obstacle, nobody's a cheerleader. Everyone we see is a person, with hope and fear, not really that different from Clark.

There's more realism here than one would expect from a Superman movie, and it works nicely. The use of a crashed colony ship as a sort of Fortress of Solitude is a nice touch, neatly eliminating the unbelievable magic tech used to create it. Lois meeting Kal-El and figuring out he's Clark by backtracking him is a good introduction to the character of Lois, and her relationship to Clark. Having her know his secret from the start is also good. And the addition of the Codex in particular is a creative touch. It gives Zod reason to come to Earth, and gives Kal-El himself additional weight.

Now what's wrong with this movie? The entire last act! We have this excellent setup, great conflict for Superman against a worthy opponent, and what's the resolution? Superman just has to punch something hard enough. A machine, Kryptonians, something. During none of the fight to save the world did Superman have to show any intelligence at all. And neither did his enemies! His opponents were as un-injurable as he was, but did either ever try something creative? No! "Well, throwing you through a massive exploding silo and into the road at the speed of sound didn't so much as scratch you. Maybe if I punch you through another half-dozen buildings I'll slow you down!" I mean, really, people. Try the heat vision, try threatening a valuable asset, try something besides "punch harder"!

So after all that backstory, all that world-building, all we ended up with was a fake-looking inconsequential fight scene. That battle would have killed literally hundreds of thousands of people! And there's not a hint that anyone cared.

Hollywood has become a strange place lately. (Moreso.) We have these wonderfully-written movies that really care about the source material, and take creative risks with it. We have the special effects technology and budgets necessary to put on the screen literally anything you want. Yet somehow these seem to fight each other. We saw the same thing in Star Trek Into Darkness, where the mostly-excellent story fell completely apart when it was time for the big fight. But that's another review.

There are other minor flaws with Man of Steel. For their attempts to handle it well, the "secret identity" front is a mess. The General is actively trying to figure out who he is, and Superman outright tells him he's from Kansas and is 33 years old! How many 33-year-old white males of approximately this height and build, presumably lacking a birth certificate, can there be in a state of less than three million people? Maybe 50,000? I bet you the military would go through every one of those by hand to find this guy.

That little joke at the end where the female Captain tells the general that Superman is "kinda hot"? Yeah, that should have been dropped from the final edit. Insultingly unprofessional.

I won't be buying this movie, and I won't be watching it again. I'm glad I saw it, but I won't recommend it to others. I wish we lived in a world where recuts, serious all-out modifications of movies like this, were a thing. This movie could be a great film, on par with Nolan's Batman movies, if only they'd come up with a good resolution. As it is, it's a mish-mash, and the end ruins the start.

Fixing government contracting

There's been a lot of attention lately on the process of winning government contracts. A few observations I've heard in particular:

1) Contracts go to the lowest bidder who can "do the job"
2) To be able to "do the job" involves jumping through a huge number of hoops, and knowing where those hoops are is an expertise in itself
3) From the perspective of the bidders, it's better to get the contract by underbidding the actual cost than it is to lose the contract

The third is the real problem. The companies doing the bidding have an incentive to underbid; if it's "win this contract on false pretenses or go out of business", then obviously they'll underbid! And if they win the contract by underbidding, it might be ten years before anyone realizes they can't actually do the job for that amount of money; there may be consequences for underbidding, but the feedback path is entirely too slow. And then who's screwed? The government, meaning the people, meaning you and me. Cost estimates are being provided by someone who has an incentive to lie! That incentive structure is entirely backwards.


Costs should be estimated by an entity that has an incentive to estimate cost accurately, someone who gets paid solely based on their history of accurate bid evaluation. This entity would be responsible for selecting the company who does the actual work, based on their evaluation of the proposal and the company's quality of work. It would make sense for that entity to also be able to navigate the byzantine regulations; they would be an interface between the government and the contractors. That way, the companies that can do the work effectively don't have to also worry about understanding government rules and regulations.

Now, how is this different from what we have? Doesn't the government act as the evaluator I'm describing? The difference is that the government is singular. I'm suggesting that there should be multiple companies, say at least four, that perform these evaluations in parallel. Every project that gets bid, all the evaluator entities produce cost estimates. The government synthesizes the data from the estimators, and picks the direction to go. The evaluator entities are continually judged on their continually-updating estimates of the project's progress, completion date, and cost. The entities that do better are paid more, and get more weight next project evaluation.

Incentivize the behavior you want to see. Otherwise people will just tell you what you want to hear.

Republican Heath Care Proposal

For years now, I and many others have been asking the Republican Party one question: if you successfully repeal the ACA, what then? I mean, it's not like the ACA created the health care crisis in this country. It's been growing for decades. And regardless of what one might think of the ACA as a solution, if you repeal it, we're back to the original problems.

So say the Republicans have their way and repeal the ACA. What will they replace it with? Nothing? Are we back to the unsolved crisis, or do they have some other solution?

(Given that the ACA is a Republican idea to start with, it's kind of a funny question to ask. But ask it we must.)

Behold, we finally have an answer!

Most of the proposed ideas don't actually accomplish anything. Health savings accounts are only useful to people who have money to begin with; most people who can't afford insurance won't be helped by that at all. Tort reform is a relatively small driver of health care costs; it's been done in some states, and had minimal effect on overall cost. And the ACA very specifically and expressly doesn't fund abortions.

Now, purchasing insurance across state lines sounds good, but it's a practical nightmare.What happens if I buy insurance from a company in Alaska, and that company screws me? Do I have to drive to Juneau to file a complaint with their regulatory agency? Now, if we had a universal set of federal insurance regulations, that might work, and would probably reduce the overhead costs of running an insurance company. (Can you imagine having to keep track of fifty different sets of laws? There are a huge number of employees just for that, and that cost comes out of your premiums!) But then, that would be expanding the power of the federal government, which any good Republican will tell you is evil in all cases. Except when it's convenient for it to not be evil.

But what's most entertaining about this is that they want to "Ensure Access for Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions". And they want to do that without the individual mandate, requiring everyone to carry insurance at all times.

Think about that for a minute. If you can just sign up for insurance at any time, no matter what you may already have, why on earth would you carry insurance before getting sick? Just wait until you get sick, and then sign up! Under the Republican plan, they have to take you and pay your medical bills!

Except that everyone will do that. Which means the insurance companies get essentially no income, and have massive outlays. So the Republican plan destroys the entire concept of health insurance, and all insurance companies go out of business.
Good job, guys.

Amendments: Other

Laws must be public. It should never be the case that people are beholden to laws that they can not know. But there are secret courts. There are cases where the law itself has been treated as a copyrighted document. If law can not be known, it can not be followed.

1) All laws and court rulings, both federal and state, must be publicly accessible without cost or restriction

The Commerce Clause has been interpreted to mean many things that, on a plain English reading, it does not mean. Honestly, I'm not sure how much havoc would be wrought if we forced the federal government to regulate only interstate commerce, and leave intrastate commerce alone. I'd love to hear more discussion about that. So I'm going to throw this out there, without any comment about whether I personally support it or not.

2) The federal government shall have no authority to regulate private property that does not in any case change owners, cross state lines, or otherwise have effect outside the boundaries of a particular state.

In many places in the United States, people convicted of felonies are denied the right to vote, regardless of the extent of their felony. In some cases, this is perfectly reasonable. However, the breadth and length of this punishment can be excessive, especially in light of the huge fraction of our populace in prison.

3) No person shall be deprived of the right to vote for conviction of a crime, except for crimes of violence, treason, or electoral fraud. Removal of suffrage can only take place after all judicial appeals are exhausted. Suffrage must be immediately reinstated in the event the conviction is overturned.

It's been pointed out that I've failed to address some issues with the amendment process itself (going way back to my first suggested amendment). It's not really reasonable for an amendment to be allowed to stay in limbo indefinitely. Look at what happened with the 27th amendment. Many of the ratifications of that amendment took place over a century before its eventual passage. But it is not reasonable to assume that just because Tennessee (for example) of 2013 ratified something, that Tennessee of 2200 also approves of it. Or even, really, that Tennessee of 2015 approves of it.

4) Any state ratification of a proposed Constitutional amendment shall only be valid for twenty years.

5) A state has the right to rescind its ratification of a proposed Constitutional amendment, by means each state shall determine by law. This shall only apply to proposed amendments.

Amendments: Since 9/11

The Patriot Act has been criticized since its inception for granting the government overreaching powers in the name of protecting us. Under the act, the government can issue a National Security Letter demanding information on arbitrary people at arbitrary times, with little or no court oversight. These letters can come with gag orders, forbidding the recipient to talk about the fact that a search has taken place. Searches can be performed without the subject even knowing someone has been in his home! Some of these sections have already been held unconstitutional, but if they were law once, they can be law again. An amendment is called for to prevent such abuses.

1) Any planned or ongoing gathering of information relating to a criminal investigation, where such gathering would otherwise violate civil rights, shall be considered to be a search, and as such must be authorized by the courts before it can take place. The agency seeking such a warrant must clearly demonstrate to the court why such a warrant is necessary. The target of the information-gathering must be limited, and clearly specified in the warrant. The person who is the subject of the warrant must be promptly informed of the search.


The fourth amendment protects our right against unreasonable search. A federal court has defined warrantless searches as reasonable if:
"(1) a substantial government interest exists, (2) warrantless inspections are necessary to further the regulatory scheme, and (3) the statute authorizing the warrantless inspection serves as a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant."

This is not an unreasonable definition. However, from a procedural standpoint it is clearly insufficient. For ten years now the TSA has been making us less safe. They are extremely ineffective at finding actual threats, they become a threat by their invasive searches, and they cost us billions of dollars. Obviously the fourth amendment is insufficient to protect America from agencies like the TSA. We should require that any scheme for warrantless searches be approved by a court before implementation, and that such schemes be demonstrably effective.


2) In cases where unwarranted searches are reasonable and otherwise lawful, the means of such searches must be established as both necessary and effective in a court of law prior to such searches being performed. Cases may be brought before the court for the express purpose of establishing same for any proposed means of search.

The disposition and treatment of prisoners taken during the war on terror has been, quite simply, unamerican and evil. American agencies have kidnapped people outside our jurisdiction, or simply accepted the word of locals that some individual has done wrong. These agencies have handed prisoners to allies for torture, or tortured them directly. They've held prisoners without charge, and plan to do so indefinitely, in inhumane conditions. In many cases, we have no evidence that these people have participated in any wrongdoing. Worse, what evidence we have may not be admissible in court because it was obtained under torture.

We have to stop this. America must reclaim the moral high ground. There's no point in defending our way of life if we have to change our way of life to do it. Sometimes it's not enough to be protected. We need to live in a way that's worthy of protection. Sometimes being good means taking the risk of letting someone hurt you.

3) No person shall be held indefinitely without charge or trial, either within the United States or by any agency thereof. All persons held by the United States, regardless of geographic location, shall have swift access to the courts.


4) No agency of the United States shall release a prisoner of any sort into the custody of another country or non-state agency if there is reasonable expectation that the prisoner's human rights will be violated in the recipient's custody.

Amendments: Prisons

The US prison population is higher than any other country in the world. We, the land of the free, have more of our population in prison than China or Iran. Further, people leaving our prisons are often completely unable to reintegrate into society. This results in a huge and increasing portion of our population being unproductive and drains on our resources, to no good end.

So why do we have so many people in prison?

The first answer is obvious: the war on drugs, as presently implemented, is an utter failure. Punishing people with ever-longer prison sentences for relatively minor crimes makes everything worse. We have more people in jail, and the crime rate does not go down. We need to eliminate jail time for simple possession of drugs. This alone will reduce our prison population to something like half of what it presently is, without endangering the general populace.

1) Simple possession of controlled substances shall in no case be punished by incarceration, nor considered in determining the length of incarceration for other related crimes, unless such incarceration is primarily for the purpose of treatment. This applies retroactively to all persons presently so imprisoned.

Similar problems apply to other crimes. Mandatory minimum sentences do not lower crime rates. They are a political game our elected officials play so that they can appear tough on crime, to the detriment of us all.

2) Courts shall have full discretion over the sentencing of convicted criminals. All mandatory sentencing laws are void. Presently incarcerated convicts shall have the right to have the length of their sentences appealed if those sentences were set by mandatory minimum laws.

Those two things should greatly reduce the American prison population, without arbitrarily releasing violent criminals. But there are still other people in jail that shouldn't be: innocent people.

Consider the concept of a plea bargain. Say you're accused of a crime, a crime you did not commit. If the jury gets it wrong and you're found guilty, you may spend the rest of your life in jail. If, however, you plead guilty to a lesser crime, you "get to" spend only five years in jail. You are offered an incentive to lie and ruin your own life. Why? Well, so the government can save money! Forget justice, prosecuting all those cases in open court is expensive!

This is one of the worst ideas in the history of free countries. If our justice system isn't funded sufficiently to operate without blackmailing innocent people, our justice system isn't funded sufficiently. Plea bargains should never be allowed.

3) The state shall not offer persons accused of a crime any inducement to plead guilty, including the option of pleading to a lesser charge.

Finally, we have the concept of privately-run prisons. Practically, these simply don't work. There are some things you don't want run by the lowest bidder, and keeping dangerous people away from the rest of society is one of them. Beyond that, though, it's a very bad idea to create a section of society that benefits from there being more people in jail. That's a terrible incentive to add to any system.

4) The operation of prisons shall not be outsourced to any non-governmental agency.

Amendments: Copyright

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

As the constitution clearly states, the function of copyright is to incentivize the creation of new works. The purpose of copyright is not to help people or companies make money in itself; only to give them more reason to create additional new works. This is a good and valuable purpose.

I would argue that the present length of copyright is far past what actually incentivizes new work, and in fact disincentivizes it in many cases. Since much creative work is strongly based on older work, preventing works from entering public domain is damaging to the creative process. For a popular example, if Pride and Prejudice had never entered public domain, we would not now have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

(Reasonable people are welcome to disagree as to whether this would be a bad thing or not.)

Unfortunately, the Berne Convention makes any attempt to shorten copyright terms problematic. Naturally, a constitutional amendment can do whatever we want it to. I'm just pointing out that it's a broad issue. As such, I am not presently proposing an amendment relating to the length of copyright terms.

Regardless of copyright length, I most definitely hold that retroactive copyright extensions should never be allowed. If a work has been copyrighted for decades, and is about to enter public domain, it does not incentivize creation of new work for that copyright to be extended. Nor does it meet the clearly-stated criterion that copyrights be for limited times.

The present length of copyright terms extends well beyond the creator's lifetime, and probably the lifetime of all their children. The only purpose of retroactive extensions is to give money to people who never had anything to do with the creation of the copyrighted work. That is harmful to society in all cases, and is not a power government should have.

1) Copyrights exist for a fixed term, defined at issuance of that copyright. In no case shall a copyright term be retroactively lengthened.


I also hold that the penalties for copyright infringement are excessive and damaging to society. One can look at Capitol v. Thomas to see how extreme this gets. A woman illegally downloaded 24 songs for her personal consumption (not for profit, which is a whole different ballgame). She was fined nearly $10,000 per song! She would have been penalized far less for just shoplifting a CD, which would have done far more damage than downloading the songs. Punishment for breaking a just law is correct; beheading someone for jaywalking is not. This law is a total miscarriage of justice.

2) Statutory penalties for copyright infringement, where the party convicted of infringing did not profit, shall in no case exceed ten times the market value of the item infringed.

Another significant issue with copyright in the United States is orphan works. It is not necessary under current US law to register a work to have a copyright on it. But with no central registry, there's no guaranteed way to find the rights-holder if you want to license their work! This becomes even more complicated if the rights-holder was a company that no longer exists. There's no way for someone wanting to license an orphan work to do it legally. This discourages the creation of new work, which is the entire point of copyright.

So if we don't have a registry of copyrights, and we want a licensing process for orphan works, obviously some entity must stand for the interests of the absent rights-holder in negotiations. My suggestion would be for a court to determine the appropriate value of a license for the work, and for that court to hold any license fees paid. If the rights-holder becomes known, they get their money, and can renegotiate the license. If not, the work enters public domain.

3) In the event a copyright-holder can not be identified or located, a court shall set appropriate license fees, applicable for a fixed time. Should the rights-holder become known before that time, they shall receive all fees paid, and have all standard rights to re-negotiate the license at the end of the fixed term. If the rights-holder does not become known before the end of the license period, the work shall enter public domain.

Amendments: Civil Rights

The federal government has recently been invading the privacy of its citizens, with some of the most absurd arguments I've ever seen for why they can do this. They claim that e-mails stored on a server by Google don't belong to me any more. They claim that meta-data on my phone calls aren't private. Such positions are ridiculous on the face of them. It's apparent that our privacy extends only as far as we demand it to extend. We must make it clear that our information is ours, not subject to an overreaching government.

1) The right of individuals to be secure in their person, things, and effects, as well as the right of individuals to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party. These rights shall also extend to communication by that individual with whatever party, and information that such communication took place.

Prosecutors and judges have also tried to roll back our fifth amendment rights, punishing (presumed, remember, this is America) innocent people for refusing to decrypt their files. We have a right against self-incrimination, and we need to make it clear that it applies in all cases.

2) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

Police of late have been in the habit of attaching GPS tracking units to cars without a warrant. As in, a police officer will walk into your driveway, attach a tracker to your car, and keep a record of your movements. Without a warrant! There is no difference between this and breaking into your house to perform a search without a warrant. A court recently ruled this unconstitutional, but courts sometimes change their minds. This practice needs to be ended permanently.

3) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

Some jurisdictions have tried to make it illegal to record the police. Such laws have been ruled unconstitutional, and rightly so. Still, I believe this should be expressly codified as a right in the Constitution, to ensure that such laws are not passed again.

4) All public actions taken by any law enforcement officer are subject to recording by the public. Such recordings shall be treated as the private property of the owner. Willful destruction of such records by anyone not their rightful owner shall be treated the same as destruction of any other private property.

The fact that this article exists at all is an embarrassment to our country. Torture should not be a subject of debate. It should be illegal, in all cases, by all persons, everywhere. Those who engage in it, authorize it, or allow it to occur under their watch, should be punished.

5) No person shall be tortured, either as punishment or to elicit testimony, or for any other reason. Torture or conspiracy to commit torture by any person in the United States, or in the service thereof, shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.


It is also an embarrassment that people are sent to prison for failure to pay a debt. Debtors' prison is one of the most absurd concepts ever to be imagined: you don't have money, so we're going to keep you from making any more money, and take over paying for your living expenses! (Sheer brilliance, I tell you!) It's immoral, and it's bad policy.

6) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

Amendments: Constitutionality

Courts sometimes rule that particular laws are unconstitutional. For that to happen in our present system, a case must be brought before the court. The person bringing the suit must have standing, or the case will be thrown out. So if an unconstitutional law is passed, it remains on the books until that law:

A) Harms or imminently threatens to harm someone
B) The harmed person files suit
C) The suit is completed

This process could take years, during which time the law is still being enforced on millions of people. Why should we have to live for years under an unconstitutional law, waiting for just the right court case to show up and wind its way through the system? If a law is unconstitutional, it should be possible for that to be determined before it is implemented!

1) The courts may rule on the constitutionality of bills before Congress prior to their adoption as law, or on any new bill passed into law.

Further, there are some cases where no one has standing. For example, cost-of-living adjustments to Congressional pay mid-term are a violation of the 27th amendment. (The DC circuit court disagrees, but... really? I'm not a lawyer, but... really?) The Tenth Circuit Court ruled that a Congressperson does not have standing to sue for this violation, presumably because they're not harmed by being given more money. But it's also precedent that taxpayers do not have standing to sue for unconstitutional use of tax money except in very narrow circumstances.

That leaves... nobody! No one has standing!

So if a law is clearly unconstitutional, but there is no clear harm to one specific individual, there is no way for this law to be challenged in court. This is simply an absurdity, a flaw in our system. If a law is unconstitutional, all citizens are harmed by its very existence, and thus should have standing to challenge it.

Obviously there's some potential for abuse here. When combined with my previously-proposed free court access, you'll see people challenging every single law on the books, constantly. There's the potential for a denial-of-service attack against the courts. There has to be some cost associated with challenging a law. I don't have a firm cost in mind, so I'll just throw something out there for discussion purposes.

2) A US citizen has the right to challenge the constitutionality of any law in court. Fees may be charged to file a constitutional challenge, but these fees shall not exceed the median weekly wage of the United States.

Amendments: Election Reform

I like to start these articles by identifying problems, but when it comes to elections, it's such a list!

• Congress with single-digit approval ratings and 90%+ re-election rates
• Entrenched political class
• No response to the desires of the people as a whole
• Winner-take-all electoral vote distribution
• Disenfranchises the minority in the state, who have no effect on the election outcome
• Heavily-gerrymandered single-winner congressional districts
• Again, disenfranchises the minority, who get no representation
• Since the minority party has no effect, candidates pander to the extreme of the majority party
• High barriers to ballot access
•  Locked-in two-party system with no chance of competition (and thus improvement!)
• Ballot design gives advantages to some candidates
• Order has an effect on odds of winning
• Party recognition on ballot further entrenches party-based politics
• No paper trail
• Reduces voter confidence in the system
• Can't effectively recount votes
• Dominance of money in elections
• Distorts system; some people have more influence than others

 Let's address the ballot issues first, as they're relatively straightforward.

1) All votes cast in elections for offices federal, state, or local, shall be recorded in a written, durable form readable by a healthy human without mechanical assistance. This record shall be presented to the voter for verification before the vote is cast, whereupon that voter shall have the option to recast their vote. The federal government shall define standards for this process, and fund the acquisition of necessary equipment.

2) Ballots shall not indicate the party affiliation of any candidate.

3) In the event that voters are presented with a ballot listing the names of candidates, the order of those names shall be randomized on each ballot.

4) In no case shall the signatures of more than 100 registered voters be required for a candidate to be listed on the ballot for any election, nor shall fees be charged for such listing.

I believe the emphasis on how Presidential elections operate is unfortunate, as there are tens of thousands of other elections in this country every year, all of which have very similar problems. However, any list of proposed amendments for the people to consider would be incomplete without one eliminating the electoral college.

5a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

If not that, I'd suggest an alternative:

5b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

Nor would the list be complete without mention of term limits. Incumbents clearly have tremendous advantage when seeking reelection, meaning the election is not a level playing field. However, we also are not well-served to throw out years of governing experience without hope of recovery. There are a few possible approaches to this, which I list in order of my increasing preference:

6a) No person shall hold the office of Senator more than twice, or of Representative more than six times.

6b) States shall have the right to set term limits for their Representatives or Senators.

6c) No person shall hold the office of Senator, Representative, or President twice in succession, but may otherwise serve as many times as elected.

Now, the fun ones! 

Gerrymandering is essentially a problem of incentives. There is an inherent conflict of interest, with power on one hand, and fairness of elections on the other. Power always wins. This leads to single-party districts, causing candidates in those districts to pander to the extreme wing of the majority party, effectively disenfranchising the minority party.

If you let politicians redraw their own districts, then obviously they'll use that power to benefit themselves. The only solution is to take that power away.

7) All electoral districts shall be drawn by a politically-neutral group of at least five people, none of whom are elected officials. This body shall be politically neutral. The states shall have the power to define the selection process for this group.

Personally, I'm a big fan of multi-member districts and proportional representation, which could eliminate gerrymandering concerns entirely. I would hold that use of such is something that's best decided on a state level. However, states presently do not have that option. Federal law prevents states from having multi-member districts.

8) States shall have the right to determine whether to use single-member or multi-member House districts, so long as each voter's weight is approximately equal.

I also hold that states should have more control over their legislators.

9) States shall have the right to hold recall elections for their Representatives or Senators, and to determine processes to fill vacancies between elections.

The influence of money over our elections is undeniable, and undeniably undemocratic. The very idea that one person or group should be able to influence the outcome of an election more than another, simply because one of them has more money than the other, is an indisputable distortion of how any democracy should work. And with the Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court has gutted what few restrictions there were on the problem. Either Congress should have the power to regulate campaign contributions, or election campaigns should be publicly funded. See Move to Amend for more.

10a) Congress shall have the power to regulate donations and spending on federal election campaigns. The states shall have such power over election campaigns for all other offices.

10b) All elections shall be publicly funded; spending private money on an election, unless that money is equally shared among all candidates for that office, shall be forbidden by law.

Finally, and most fundamentally, the entire concept of plurality voting is flawed. If there are more than two candidates, you get vote-splitting, which throws the election to an unpopular candidate. That's ultimately why we have a two-party system, and why we have primaries and runoffs. There is no law that says plurality voting must be used. Nobody ever chose it as the best voting system; we simply use it because we always have. Switching to approval voting would be cheaper, simpler, more democratic, and give vastly better results in every measurable way.

(While there are other voting systems to choose from, the only one that could be argued to be better than approval voting is range voting, and it's far more complicated and expensive to implement. IRV is more commonly suggested, but harder to implement, more complex to execute, and technically inferior on a number of counts. IRV isn't even monotone!)

11) All public elections at any level of government shall be held using approval voting.

Amendments: Self-Defense Rights

Self defense is also a fundamental right, even more so than property rights. What weapons one may have to assist in that defense is a subject of much debate, and many contradictory court rulings. Much of this argument is about the exact wording of the constitution. I suggest that instead of arguing about what the constitution means now, we instead determine what it would be best for it to say. So put the second amendment aside, and start from first principles.

Much of the function of government is to handle situations where two individuals' interests conflict. Let's make up an extreme situation: say I have an interest in having a weapon that would let me blow up the sun with no effort. (I don't, just for the record.) But my neighbor also has an interest in me not having such a weapon, because it makes me a threat to him. Our interests are in conflict, so government balancing those interests is appropriate. And given that one person having that much power totally destabilizes the entirety of civilization, I'd say they'd be right to come down against my interests entirely. So we can conclude that it is right for us to allow government to keep people from having weapons of infinite power.

On the other hand, I have fists. (On both hands, if I'm so inclined.) My neighbor would be safer if I didn't. But obviously you can't go around cutting everyone's hands off, because (shockingly) that actually makes everyone less safe. So it is not correct for us to allow government to regulate all possible weapons.

Somewhere between fists and nova bombs is a balance point. So how do we identify that point? At what point does a weapon's nature as a threat to my neighbor (all three hundred million of them) outweigh its value to me for self defense, or for whatever other purpose I may have in mind?

I would say we can divide weapons into three classes. Please note that I am proposing this scheme as a suggestion, and not saying that I definitely believe that each weapon I list in a class must belong there. I'm trying to start a conversation, not hand down wisdom from on high!

A) Trivial weapons. These are weapons that the government can not and should not try to regulate, if only because the side-effects of trying would be absurd. Things like fists, rocks, sticks, most knives, maybe  swords, possibly some guns.
B) Peaceful-use weapons. These are weapons that can be used to kill in small numbers, but have other legitimate uses, like hunting, sport, or self-defense. They may be regulated in some way, but should not be outlawed or made overly onerous to own. Things like shotguns, hunting rifles, swords, possibly small explosives.
C) Killing weapons. These are weapons which can kill large numbers of people easily, and have very limited application otherwise. As we do not live in a society where one's ability to kill large numbers of people quickly is of any significant benefit to law-abiding citizens, these weapons definitely should be regulated, and possibly outlawed entirely. These include automatic rifles, high-capacity magazines, and large explosives.

If we accept this scheme, the next step is to define which weapons fit into what class, and then to decide if and how to regulate those for which it is appropriate. However, those matters are entirely variable with time. As such, they are not appropriate material for an amendment to the constitution. We should set up the framework, at let the details of the law vary by time and location.

1) Weapons which convey the ability to kill large numbers of people rapidly are subject to regulation or ban by federal or state governments.

2) Weapons which are useful for purposes including (but not limited to) sport and self-defense, but are not useful for killing large numbers of people quickly, are subject to regulation by state and federal governments. However, their ownership shall not be barred to any adult person except for conviction of a felony or declaration of mental incompetence by a court of law. Regulation may include limits on the manner and locations allowable for carrying and storing such weapons, so long as such regulations do not interfere with the right of ownership and legitimate use.

Admittedly, this leaves the possibility for laws to be passed which limit weapons beyond the intent of this text. "Large" and "quickly" are vague. Those laws would then have to be challenged in court, as is often the case. In this case perhaps that is best. However, I am always open to better wording.

On the subject of self defense, when is one allowed to exercise force against another person? One reasonable standard is set by if you have a legitimate fear for your safety. If someone breaks down your door, you can be reasonably confident you are in danger and should defend yourself.

Except not so much.

No knock warrants are simple: they put civilians in danger, they put police in danger, and they diminish public trust in the police an the justice system. All that, for the ability to catch an occasional drug dealer in the act. This is not an acceptable tradeoff!

3) When executing warrants, arrests, or otherwise issuing legally binding instructions, law enforcement officers shall in all cases clearly identify themselves, their intent, and their duties, before execution of same.

Amendments: Property Rights

There's a lot of confusion about constitutional rights. A lot of people will tell you they're God-given and immutable. I don't agree with that. (I'd argue that the entire concept of defending your own rights is, to a great degree, antithetical to Christianity. But that's not today's post.) Arguments about rights descended from on high are for philosophy and religion; while those topics are fascinating and useful, they're not what you use to build a functional government.

What we're talking about are rights that people need to have for society to function. The Constitution is not holy writ, to any degree. It works amazingly well because it's a well-crafted work of man. But that's also why it's flawed, and why it can be improved.

Even though it's flawed (as all works of man must be), the Constitution is brilliant, so let's start from what we've got. Most or all of the rights listed in the Constitution are there in response to specific issues the founders saw in their time. They saw problems, and fixed them! But there are problems they couldn't anticipate. So let's look at what they gave us, see what problems we have today, and go from there.

I'd argue that the rights listed in the Constitution are great in concept, but sometimes they're stated in too narrow a fashion. Our government often completely bypasses the spirit of the law, focusing entirely on the letter of it. (And sometimes on a very bizarre interpretation of that!) If we clarify the rights in the Constitution, the government will no longer has such end-runs available.

Let's start with property rights. There's a concept called civil forfeiture. The concept is that if property is used in a crime, the government can take it from its rightful owner, even if the owner wasn't involved in the crime. A person can be punished for crimes they did not commit. This is clearly an un-American practice and needs to end, immediately. Read more at fear.org.

1) Property shall only be taken from its owner without consent if that owner is convicted of a crime, or if just compensation is given. No other takings are permitted.

And while we're on the topic of just compensation, how about eminent domain? The constitution allows the government to take your property for public use, but only if you are justly compensated for it. However, what qualifies as "just compensation" is not stated clearly, and so we end up with injustice. The typical standard is "market value", but what's actually offered by the condemning agency is often far less than that. On the occasion a citizen goes to court to demand a higher price, they often get one.

The fundamental problem is that the condemning agency benefits from low-balling the estimated value of the property. The agency determining the value of the property can't be the same as the one paying for it. Instead, all eminent domain cases should have their prices set by a court, eliminating conflict of interest. This may clog the courts, but if the people aren't getting justice for lack of courts, you need more courts.

2) In cases where private property is taken for public use, what qualifies as just compensation for that property shall be determined by a judge.

Some people take issue with the use of eminent domain for uses that are not public. At this point, I'm not addressing that. From the perspective of the person losing their property, it's all the same, and for this immediate post I'm focusing on that person's rights. I may discuss that at a later time.

Amendments: Congressional Process

After watching the joke that our Congress has become over the last few years, it's clearly time to redefine how Congress operates. Again, let's start with the problems we see today, and go from there.

How about bills that cover more than one topic? Riders are often used to either advance an unpopular bill, or kill a popular one. This happens all the time; the recent shutdown was one obvious example. Regardless of which side you may deride more for what went on, the simple fact is that a bill that couldn't otherwise pass both houses was attached to an important but unrelated spending bill. Bills should pass or fail on their own merits; we should remove this constantly abused avenue for political games. Bills should be limited to a single subject, as they are in 43 states already. I'll just borrow language from one of those constitutions.

1) Each bill, except general appropriation bills and bills for the codification and general revision of the laws, shall contain only one subject, clearly expressed in its title. If any subject is embraced in any act and is not expressed in the title, only so much of the act not so expressed is void.

Still looking at the shutdown, let's look at how Congress spends money. Right now there's a two-step process: first Congress orders money to be spent (the budget resolution), then Congress allows money to be borrowed to pay for that spending (raising the debt ceiling). The system is essentially letting Congress spend money, and then asking them again later if they really meant it. Having two separate steps is absurd; it creates no good, and just asks for more brinksmanship

2) If Congress passes a law authorizing spending, that law shall also be construed to authorize any borrowing necessary to execute such spending.

The fact that a government shutdown can result in so much damage, and yet the Congress responsible is not in any way penalized, is unacceptable. Some have suggested cutting their pay, but that only hurts the poorer members. If you want a real disincentive, it needs to be applied across the board, and it needs to be something no member of Congress can ignore: in the event of government shutdown, we should hold new elections, immediately. I guarantee you, we won't see a shutdown again for a long, long time.

3) In the event of a failure of the Congress to pass a bill funding ongoing government operations, all congresspersons shall be immediately subject to election, to be held within three weeks of the end of the previous spending law. If the Congress passes a bill funding government operations, and the President fails to sign said bill, the President shall also be subject to election. If the Congress overrides a Presidential veto of such a bill, only the President shall be subject to election.

In any interim between laws authorizing spending, the funding levels from the previous spending law shall continue to apply.

Finally, we see cases where a bill would clearly pass if brought to a vote, but procedural games prevent that vote from occurring. Congress presently has the power to set its own rules of order, but those rules are being used to prevent important work from occurring. I proposed that there should be a means of ratifying amendments bypassing Congress and convention; I now suggest something similar for Congress.

4) Any other rules of order notwithstanding, in the event that a majority the members of either chamber of Congress officially declares their approval of a bill, by sponsorship or other means, that bill shall be deemed to have been passed by that chamber.

I have one additional point, which has bothered me for some years now. The Palm Sunday Compromise (I here refrain from comment on its contents or effects) was passed by the US Senate on a vote of 3-0, 97 not present. This is simply an undemocratic way to do business.

5) Neither chamber of Congress shall conduct business without a majority of its members participating.

Amendments: Civil Law

If I have a dispute with someone, or they with me, we should be able to go before a court of law and present our case. The case should be decided on the merits thereof, with no partiality in outcome based on race, belief, gender, or economic status. No matter who you are, no matter how much money you have, no matter who you have a problem with, you can go to court and have justice.

We all know that's not so. How do we fix it?

Let's start with cost of access, with court costs and fees of various kinds. How can we justify forcing someone to pay for access to what's supposed to be a universally accessible system of justice? Some people genuinely can't afford those fees! That's little different than a poll tax: "it's a fundamental right, now pay for it." And if the rich (of whom I'm admittedly one, by most standards) have to pay higher taxes so the poor have access to justice, I'm fine with that. That's part of having a civilization.

1) No fees shall be charged for access to the courts.

But court fees aren't the only thing making justice inaccessible to the poor. The cost of lawyers is also an issue. If the poor sue the rich, the rich may win simply by weight of lawyers. And if the rich sue the poor, the poor may settle to avoid legal costs. Neither of these is justice. The depth of one's pocketbook should not make you more (or less) likely to win in court.

One common solution proposed is "loser-pays". But that will just have the tendency to reduce suits by the poor, who can't afford to pay if they lose. Our goal isn't the reduce the number of lawsuits, it's to make a system of justice that works equally for everyone.

Instead, I propose looking at how real estate agents get paid. (There may be variations, obviously, but this is how I've seen things done.) When a house changes hands, 6% of the sale price goes to the agents involved. If there's one agent, they get all 6%. If there are two agents, they split it between them. This means that if one party has an agent, it costs the other party nothing to have one as well!

Imagine we did something similar with lawsuits. Say all legal fees for a case were put into one pot, and divided evenly among all parties to the suit. Now, every party has exactly as much money for legal representation as every other party. If Sony sues me, they pay for my representation. They can spend ten million dollars attacking me, but I get just as much to defend myself with. They no longer have an incentive to hit me with a huge hammer just to scare me into settling. Extortion lawsuits are now much harder.

Consider the other way around. Say I sue BP. If my suit has merit, they may want to defend themselves with ten million dollars of lawyerage. But in that case, I get that too. If my suit is frivolous, BP may choose to defend themselves with a much cheaper legal team, knowing it will also deprive me of resources. Either way, the playing field is leveled, and set at the level both parties "agree" is appropriate to the charge.

Of course, there are other side-effect situations that could come up. Say I have ten million dollars to defend myself from an extortion suit, but I manage to negotiate myself a cheaper deal, or get pro bono representation? I can't be allowed to keep that money, or now I have an incentive to file suits than I don't mean to win. The unused money has to go somewhere. I propose the most effective place is funding the legal system itself, perhaps in the form of pro bono representation, or public defenders. However, I'm not sure if this provides some incentive for the court to alter rulings in order to get more money. This could be a flaw; advice on this matter from a lawyer would be appreciated.

2) In all lawsuits, money contributed to legal representation shall be divided evenly among all parties. Money submitted for legal representation that goes unused by any party shall be used to fund attorneys for the public defense.
 
And how about binding arbitration clauses in contracts? These are everywhere, probably in half a dozen contracts you've signed. If, say, AT&T were to royally screw all its customers, it's perfectly legal for them to say in the contract that you can't sue them as a group, only as individuals. For all practical purposes, they would be saying you can't sue them at all; why would AT&T care if one person sued them for $15? But a million people doing it, that's much more of a problem. Class-action suits are in some cases the only disincentive towards bad behavior on the part of large companies. If I sign a contract, and the other guy breaks it, I should be able to sue them in open court. Period. It should not be possible for a person to be legally forbidden from access to the courts, even by their own decision.

3) All persons in the US shall have full access to the US justice system at all times, including class-action suits, regardless of prior contractual obligations. Any clause of a contract which denies either party access to a court of law for redress of grievance, is hereby invalid.

Amendments: Criminal Law

Courts are our universal access to justice. No matter what you're accused of, you won't be punished unless you're found guilty. A judge and a jury will evaluate your case, and give you a fair outcome.

I'll wait until you've stopped laughing...

It obviously doesn't work that way. It should, but it doesn't. We need to fix a lot of things about our system of criminal justice.

First, being arrested or charged with a crime can do extreme damage to a person's reputation. Many people are arrested and charged, then found not-guilty. Our entire system is based on the premise of not punishing people until they're found guilty in a court of law, but that's not at all what happens. Even if the accused is never convicted, or if the arrested is never charged, there can be serious long-term consequences.

The best way to fix this is to simply not publish the names of those arrested or charged. Up until the point of conviction, the system is supposed to treat us as innocent. The public has no interest in knowing the name of an innocent person, while that innocent person is clearly and definitely harmed by the public knowing about what's going on. Only on conviction should names be published.

1) Persons arrested or charged with crimes have the right to privacy until convicted. No person accused of a crime shall have their name publicly released until and unless they are convicted. Purposeful violation of the privacy of the accused without their written consent, filed with the court, shall be punishable by law.

Second, how many times have we heard of people being freed on appeal, after years in prison? Because of that, an innocent person has had their life ruined. If the appeals process had been faster, that person might have had a normal life instead of having much of it taken away. It makes no sense to delay justice.

2) No person convicted of a crime shall be punished until all judicial appeals are exhausted. Appeals shall be conducted without undue delay.

Which raises the question, how long do you have to wait to get justice? If someone has done me wrong, and I have to wait a year for a court date, that is not justice. Justice delayed is often justice denied. The same goes for public defenders, who are overworked and underpaid, to the detriment of their clients. Both quick access to courts and easy access to defense are required for a functional system. Right now, we have neither.

If the government is going to fund anything, elections and courts should be at the top of the list. Local law clearly isn't going to fix this, or it would have already.

3) Every jurisdiction shall have sufficient judges and public defenders to ensure swift justice for all in that jurisdiction, including appeals. These positions shall be funded as necessary by the relevant jurisdiction, with a dedicated funding source.

Amendments: Introduction

As you may have gathered, I'm an engineer. It's not just my trade, it's my personality. I identify problems, and I find solutions. I'm also interested in politics. Many of the problems I observe in the American political system derive directly from the ground rules laid out in the US Constitution. To that end, I'll be posting about various amendments I'd propose.

In case anyone objects to this idea, let me point out that the Constitution is not perfect. It is not divine writ descended from the Holy Founders. It was a political compromise, hammered out to fit the needs of the time. It was a very good compromise, but if it was expected to be perfect, there would be no way to amend it.

The founders expected us to face new challenges, and meet them head-on in whatever way we decided best. Their central belief was that people didn't need a king; we can solve our own problems, thank you very much. But we treat the Constitution as if it is perfect, and the founders as if they had every answer and we need not think for ourselves. The fact that amendments aren't considered by the people on a regular basis is an insult to them!

I'm going to be covering a lot of suggestions, so I'll be breaking them up into sections. First, the amendment process itself. Presently, amendments have to go through two stages. First, an amendment must be proposed. This can be done one of two ways: 2/3 of both houses of Congress can approve an amendment; or an Article V convention can be called by the states. No Article V convention has ever been called, though we've gotten close a time or two.

A word about Article V conventions. A lot of lies are told about them by people who want to avoid one. The most common lie is that a convention could rewrite the entire Constitution. Well, I could do the same thing on the back of a napkin, and it would have just as much weight. Remember, nothing the convention does means anything on its own. Two-step process.

The second step is ratification. Once an amendment is formally proposed, either by Congress or by a convention, 3/4 of the states must ratify it. Otherwise, it has no effect. I don't propose changing the ratification process, at all. Only our methods of proposing amendments should be changed.

First, one concern about Article V conventions needs to be removed. It's presently impossible to call a convention that's limited to a specific purpose. Once called, a convention can propose amendments on any topic, regardless of the original reason. That should be changed, to reduce the (already unwarranted) fear of a convention.

Now, why should we have to hold conventions or wait on Congress? If 3/4 of the states ratify an amendment of the same text, why does it matter whether it was formally proposed or not? One potential problem is that, under article V, ratification can be either by state legislature or by popular vote in the state. Bypassing both congress and convention means that if one party were to control enough state legislatures, it could rewrite the entire constitution without popular consent. We do need a second level of checks in place to ensure the will of the people is being represented.


So I propose the following amendment:

1) Should 3/4 of states ratify identical amendments to the Constitution, and at least 1/2 of the total number of states containing at least 1/2 the total population of the US ratify that amendment by popular vote, that amendment shall be adopted, regardless of whether or not that amendment has been proposed by Congress or an Article V convention.

I'd love feedback on the numbers.

Why did Onan die?

Recall the story of Onan.

⁶ And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. ⁷ But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. ⁸ Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” ⁹ But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. ¹⁰ And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

The long-standing tradition is that this expresses God's displeasure with non-procreative ejaculation. I tend to think that if God had such a position, it would be more directly stated. Leviticus doesn't exactly shy away from listing several hundred detailed do's and don't's. Yet nothing like this is ever mentioned, there or anywhere else. (Further, if God had a policy of killing men for such behavior, I think we'd have one serious gender imbalance.) I think we can discount the traditional view.

So what is this really about? What is special about this particular attempt at contraception that it warrants death? If not the action itself, then it must be the context and motivation. Luckily, we're expressly told Onan's motivation: he knew the child would legally be treated as being his late brother's.

Think about this. Onan's brother Er was dead. Women can't inherit in this culture (which is a discussion for a different day). Er had no children, so who stands to inherit Er's property? The nearest male relative: Onan himself! So Onan has a choice: impregnate Tamar, and give her a child that will inherit Er's property so she'll have some way to survive; or leave her destitute and keep it all for himself.

Onan chooses personal gain over helping his brother's widow. Onan is brutally selfish.

But he doesn't stop there! Onan doesn't just refuse to help this woman, as his father Judah later does. He still has sex with her! More than once! Knowing full well he intends to leave her with nothing, this man takes sexual advantage of his dead brother's desperate widow, all the while trying to look the hero. In some places today, that would be called rape by deception.

Onan was a horrible, disgusting, selfish man. God is quite consistent in inflicting punishment for abuse and neglect of the poor. If you look at the reasons Israel is punished during the time of the prophets, it's right up there with worshiping other gods.

Onan abused a poor, helpless widow. His brothers' widow, at that. The lesson of this story has nothing to do with contraception. There's no need to make up a new rule out of nowhere to explain this circumstance.

League of Women Voters

Earlier this year, I joined the League of Women Voters. To answer your first two questions, yes, they allow men, and no, I'm not the only one.

If you're interested in why I did this, check out the history of the League. For some years they sponsored the Presidential debates. They stopped in 1988, with this epic statement:

The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.

—League President Nancy M. Neuman, LWV October 03, 1988

If you've ever seen a Presidential "debate" you know exactly what they're talking about. That alone was enough to get my attention.

The League is all about fair elections, human rights, and government transparency. Those are my issues, and both major parties have long since left me out in the cold. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. If you've been looking for a group that will act to support good government, regardless of political bent, this is it.

Find your local League, and sign up!