Landlords Versus Squeaky Wheels

Today's Washington Post features another account of the classic tenant-versus-landlord tale. And of course, right from the headline Told to Go, She Made a Stand, the story is written from the tenant's perspective. But the headline could just as well have been Deadbeat Tenant Successfully Petitions Government to Bail Her Out.

In a nutshell, Michelle Armstead received a notice on November 1 that she would be evicted from her Castlegate Apartment Homes apartment in Maryland on December 31. The management company had decided to renovate all of the apartments to the tune of $6 million and evict a few unsatisfactory tenants who had submitted numerous late payments or criminal records. Armstead had been late with her rent many times and had previously received eviction notices, so the landlord denied her petition to transfer to another apartment.

Armstead didn't think the landlord's treatment of her was fair. She became angry and mounted an organized compaign. She left flyers for her neighbors that stated: "Let's not sit back and let the powers that be tell us when we have to leave our homes. . . . Don't let them take away our power!!!!" She contacted Maryland Del. Herman L. Taylor II (D-Montgomery), who told the Post that although the renters "have done things wrong, . . . they need to be treated very carefully. They're the voiceless in our society."

Due to the squeaky-wheel noise of Armstead and Del. Taylor, Joe Giloley, chief of the county's Division of Housing and Code Enforcement, took a closer look at an agreement that the landlord and county officials signed when the company bought the property in 2003 (the reasons for this agreement, which was likely induced or coerced, are not provided in the Post article). Giloley believed that the agreement prohibits the company from using rental history as a basis for denying a tenant the option to transfer to a different apartment.

Faced with the "clarified" agreement with the County, Castlegate will not evict Armstead for the moment, but will charge her $1,008 for a newly-renovated apartment better than the apartment that she now rents for $800. "Sitting in her apartment, with its empty shelves and full packing boxes," Armstead whines: "It just feels like I'm being set up somehow."

Armstead may be setting herself up. Few of her financial details are disclosed, other than she takes home about $2,000 per month, her rent is $800 (soon to be $1000), and she has a $486 car payment. That last bit suggests that Armstead may not have her financial priorities straight.

I remember when, during my first year after law school, I took home about $1,500 a month. I rented a room in a house for less than $500 and bought a pretty decent used convertible that I still own today with monthly payments of about $250.

My advice to Armstead? Ditch the car, which is probably costing her a lot to insure as well. She could buy a brand new car for $12,500 with no money down with $289 monthly payments (at 10 percent interest given her questionable credit). The monthly savings will almost cover the amount of increased rent. Why should the landlord, who is investing $6 million to improve the apartments and the quality of life of its residents, give any slack to tenants who would rather drive nicer cars than pay their rent on time?

The Latest Volley in the War Against Bush

The Democratic National Committee has made a request under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. §552 (“FOIA”) concerning "the Bush Administration’s reported decision to undertake a massive program of spying on American citizens in apparent violation of the law and the Constitution." The FOIA request demands copies of "all documents in the possession, custody or control of the Office of Legal Counsel, prepared on or after January 20, 2001, referring, relating to or discussing the authority of the President of the United States to authorize any agency of the U.S. Government" to conduct the warrantless searches.

The following is an excerpt from the DNC Freedom of Information Act request available at http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/domesticspying:

We urge you, in considering this request, to forego invoking Exemption 5 to FOIA allowing the government to withhold documents based on deliberative process or attorney-client privilege. In these exceptional circumstances, where the President of the United States may have acted in gross disregard of the law and the Constitution, the stakes for the American people are too high for the Bush Administration and the Department of Justice to hide behind legal privileges as an excuse for withholding these documents.

Translation: The Democrats think that the President may have committed impeachable offenses. Therefore, they seek to deny the President his right to maintain the attorney client privilege available to every other American so that evidence based upon confidential legal discussions may be used against him.

I find this act of political grandstanding and lack of respect for core legal principles by the DNC far more offensive than pushing-the-envelope warrantless wiretaps of people communicating with people in foreign countries believed to be terrorists bent on killing us all. This type of warrantless search-- which was previously defended in a memorandum by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the Clinton administration in 1994 --is merely the latest fodder for the Democratic War against Bush.

Compare the feined outrage over the warrantless searches designed to protect against terrorist attacks with a very frequent occurrence in the District of Columbia: Here the police will set up roadblocks, then randomly stop cars and ask for identification and registration, then ask questions of the occupants in order to track down stolen vehicles, find drugs, etc. No one is batting an eye at these dragnet activities.

While the Republicans are focused on a war against the terrorists (too zealously, some have in good faith argued), the Democrats are focused on a political war against Bush and the Republican Party.

Love Your Homeless Neighbor

On one of the many occasions that the Pharisees sought to test Jesus, one asked Him: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" To this Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

The Second Greatest Commandment could have prevented a tragedy that began early Wednesday in Stockbridge, Georgia. Quinton Wilson, a Waffle House employee, thought it would be amusing to taunt a homeless man named Rex Leo, who often frequented the restaurant. Quinton dared Rex, who may have been drunk at the time, to drink a concoction that included industrial-strength dishwashing liquid.

At first Rex resisted, but then Quinton offered him $5 for the act. Rex never finished the drink. The mixture, according to Rex’s sister “ate through his esophagus . . . it ate his gums, his tongue. He’s on a ventilator right now.”

This morning, Rex is fighting for his life, his digestive system burned. He has contracted a staph infection and double pneumonia. For his part, Quinton is facing an aggravated battery felony charge, upgradable to a homicide count should the victim die. After being released on bail following his arrest, Quinton missed his Friday court appearance and remains at large.

Two liberal members of Congress have introduced the Bringing America Home Act (H.R. 2897), legislation which speaks in terms of a “right” to universal housing, a living wage, and health care. But the welfare state and the demand for “rights” to property— the taxpayers' property –contribute to the homeless problem.

Why do most people walk by the homeless without offering a hand? Part of the dysfunctionalism stems from the fact that long ago Americans through their elected representatives appointed government bureaucrats to take the lead in resolving the problems of homelessness and poverty. Aside from the government and relatively few private individuals, most citizens have abandoned the duty to be neighbors in the Biblical sense. Meanwhile, incidents of cruelty or mocking of the homeless increase as people begin to see the homeless as being less than human.

A case on point is the Bumfights underground video series. In 2003, some intuitive young filmmakers decided to launch an edgy project filming homeless men fighting and performing degrading acts in exchange for "prizes" such as a single donut or money for alcohol. Two of the film's producers pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to stage an illegal fight and were sentenced in June 2003 to perform 280 hours of community service work.

Last February, when the Bumfights creators appeared before the presiding judge and lied about having completed the service, the judge sentenced them to 180 days in jail. Despite the criminal liability and a civil lawsuit filed by the victims, the video-- now in its third installment -- is still being sold on the internet to the tune of 300,000 copies.

The Bumfights video has inspired many acts of hate-filled violence against homeless people, such as the incident this past August where two young men in Los Angeles were indicted on charges of attempted murder following their brutal attacks on two homeless men. The assailants told officers that they had recently watched the Bumfights video before launching the attacks.

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown was on to something when she famously declared, somewhat hyperbolically, in a 2000 speech:

Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.

Government should not be the first resort for remedying social ills. The conundrum is how to convince the majority of citizens to abandon reliance on government to fix every problem and then motivate the more comfortable among us to devote considerable personal time and resources to carrying out the Love Your Neighbor As Yourself command.

D.C. Young Republicans Endorse Davis D.C. Voting Rights Bill

The District of Columbia Young Republicans, one of the largest grassroots organizations focused on the District, last night endorsed the D.C. Fairness in Representation Act of 2005 (H.R. 2043). The legislation sponsored by Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) would give the District a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jim Moore, counsel to Congressman Davis, spoke to the group for the first 30 minutes of the meeting and laid out a defense of the bill. Members peppered Moore with questions and debated whether the founding fathers intended to leave open the issue of voting rights for the District. However, the vote on the endorsement resolution left no doubt as to the outcome: The resolution passed nearly unanimously with only a single dissenting vote.

The Davis bill, also known as the D.C. FAIR Act, would give the District its own voting member in the House in exchange for giving the state of Utah a fourth vote in the House. The law would temporarily raise the number of Representatives from 435 to 437. After the next census reapportionment, the number of House seats would return to 435, but D.C. would still retain its House seat.

The text of the resolution:

Resolution Concerning the
D.C. Fairness in Representation Act

Adopted December 12, 2005
By the District of Columbia Young Republicans

Whereas the Republican Party has a rich history of commitment to the dignity, equality, and civil rights of all individuals;

Whereas the District of Columbia, by virtue of the Constitution’s original design, has no elected representative in Congress;

Whereas the demographics of the District have changed drastically since the time of its founding, but the lack of voting rights remains unchanged;

Whereas Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) has proposed the D.C. Fairness in Representation (FAIR) Act in order to remedy the lack of such representation in a manner that is prudent, expeditious, and politically-feasible;

Whereas the D.C. FAIR Act would give the District of Columbia one vote in the House of Representatives;

Therefore, be it resolved that:

The D.C. Young Republicans endorse the D.C. FAIR Act and support efforts to further its enactment.

Boston Legal Engages in Advocacy Television

Recently I wrote about Law & Order's not-so-subtle agenda on the immigration issue. Now cometh ABC's Boston Legal, a show known for both entertaining and pushing the envelope. Let's start with a portion of the synopsis for last night's episode on the ABC website:

While [Crane, Poole & Schmidt law firm lawyer] Denise Bauer shops with her housekeeper and the woman's four-year-old son, the unthinkable happens when the boy is kidnapped by a known pedophile. An FBI special agent tells them that technicalities prevent the Bureau from getting involved, but he strongly suggests that, as private citizens, [law firm lawyers] Denise and Brad Chase conduct their own investigation. Their frantic search eventually takes them to Father Ryan, a priest who refuses to help since he can't break his confessional seal.

After this, things get pretty crazy. The firm lawyers present a phony warrant, which they are not authorized to administer even if it was valid. When the priest locks his office door in defiance of the warrant and to protect the confessional seal, Denise "breaks the glass" and convinces Brad to threaten to break down the exceedingly expensive Italian office door with a fire axe. Brad accidentally chops off three of the priest's fingers in the process.

But this shocking incident does not stop the firm's lawyers. At the behest of the FBI agent, the two lawyers take one of the priest's fingers to his hospital room and (a) notify him that they found fake documents implicating the priest in criminal fraud-- a corrupt priest is almost a cliche in movies/television now, and (b) subtly suggest that if the priest doesn't provide some information protected by the confessional seal, his finger might disappear. Naturally, the priest breaks down and provides information that leads to the discovery of the abducted child and the arrest of the perpetrator.

The subtle message here is that Catholic priests stand in the way of "justice" and that they are probably invoking privileges to prevent the discovery of their own illegal ways. This is pretty nasty propaganda.

It is also a bit of fascist propaganda as well. The syoposis's statement "technicalities prevent the Bureau from getting involved" refers to the fact that the FBI doesn't want to arrest the pedophile's brother and browbeat information about his brother out of him. So the FBI carefully directs private citizens to do what the FBI does not want to do due to "legal technicalities." The ends justify the means.

On unrelated matters, towards the end of the episode, the "conservative" firm lawyer Denny Crane goes on Larry King Live to explicitly condemn poor people. And Alan Shore strongly suggests that the people of New Orleans were ignored by the federal government during the Katrina disaster... because they were poor.

Should ABC (or NBC for its Law & Order episode) have any standing to question the recently-discovered United States policy of paying to air propaganda in Iraq... ABC and NBC are airing propaganda here, but with the help of advertisers.

Before there was Roe, there was Judge Friendly

The attacks by liberal Democrats and interest groups on Judge Samuel Alito continue unabated for his strategy-- which he formulated 20 years ago while employed with the Reagan administration --for bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade. Naturally, a judge should keep an open mind when deciding a case, but he/she need not leave experience at the chamber door.

An unbiased media would question why pro-abortion-rights Democrats are acting as if Roe and related cases have settled the issue of whether the right to pregnancy termination is a firmly-established constitutional right. Roe (as salvaged by Planned Parenthood v. Casey) is good precedent, but highly questionable constitutional law-- one must either check one's brain at the door to accept the theory underlying Roe or construct convoluted justifications for the result-oriented decision that Roe was. In short: One can be rabidly pro-choice and still be scathingly critical of Roe. But such a person usually carries the label "constitutional scholar," not "Senator."

On November 11, at the Federalist Society's Annual Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture, Judge Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (pictured above) delivered a speech that concluded with thunderous and sustained applause. (View the full text of the speech here.)

Judge Randolph recounted in detail his experience as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade. Judge Friendly sent to chambers a draft of an opinion that would have issued in the first major abortion rights case to hit the federal appellate courts. The New York state legislature acted to loosen its abortion laws, resulting in a premature, er, abortion of the case.

Judge Friendly's opinion was never released.... until Judge Randolph read portions of it on November 11. What if the opinion, which found no constitutional right to abortion, had been issued? Might it have influenced justices of the Supreme Court, causing some to pause and consider the magnitude of the Roe case and reconsider the strength of its reasoning? Would the country have been spared the ignominy of the current politicized Supreme Court nominee hearings?

While the entire speech is worthy of consumption, a couple of passages from Randolph's speech should be highlighted:

Judge Friendly viewed abortion as another matter entirely, having nothing to do with privacy of the Griswold variety. “The type of abortion the plaintiffs particularly wish to protect against governmental sanction is the antithesis of privacy,” he wrote. “The woman consents to intervention in the uterus by a physician, with the usual retinue of assistants, nurses, and other paramedical personnel . . .. While Griswold may well mean that the state cannot compel a woman to submit to an abortion, but see Buck v. Bell ___ U.S. ____ (____), it is exceedingly hard to read it as supporting a conclusion that the state may not prohibit other persons from committing one . . ..”

The Judge then moved to what he saw as the heart of the plaintiffs’ argument – that a person has a constitutionally protected right to do as he pleases with his – in this instance, her – own body so long as no harm is done to others.” As I’ll discuss in a moment, the Supreme Court, knowingly or unknowingly, has now embraced this concept as a matter of constitutional law. Judge Friendly would have none of it.

He wrote – “Apart from our inability to find all this in Griswold, the principle would have a disturbing sweep. Seemingly it would invalidate a great variety of criminal statutes which existed generally when the 14th Amendment was adopted and the validity of which has long been assumed, whatever debate there has been about their wisdom. Examples are statutes against attempted suicide, homosexual conduct, . . . bestiality, and drunkenness unaccompanied by threatened breach of the peace. Much legislation against the use of drugs might also come under the ban.

He continued “Plaintiffs’ position is quite reminiscent of the famous statement of J. S. Mill. This has given rise to a spirited debate in England in recent years. . . . We are not required to umpire that dispute, which concerns what a legislature should do – not what it may do.” And then he wrote this: “[Y]ears ago, when courts with considerable freedom struck down statutes that they strongly disapproved, Mr. Justice Holmes declared in a celebrated dissent that the Fourteenth Amendment did not enact Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics. No more did it enact J. S. Mill’s views on the proper limits of law-making.”

Later, Judge Randolph reads:

He continued: “We would not wish our refusal to declare New York’s abortion law unconstitutional as in any way approving or ‘legitimating’ it. The arguments for repeal are strong; those for substantial modification are stronger still. . . . But the decision what to do about abortion is for the elected representatives of the people, not for three, or even nine, appointed judges.”

Judge Alito is distancing himself from his intellectually-honest assessments of Roe v. Wade as being bad constitutional law, which he expressed 20 years ago. Democratic Senators, eager for any opening they can find to bring the nomination within striking distance, are pouncing on Alito for supposedly being disingenuous. But some Senators display an absolute intolerance of anyone who disagrees that abortion is a constitutional right. We ought to call them pro-abortion-rights fundamentalists. In the face of this anti-intellectualism and fundamentalism, judicial nominees can hardly be blamed for playing senatorial-like games.

Judge Alito might follow Roe as precedent and uphold the right to abortion. Or he might not. But either outcome is well within the confines of defensible constitutional law.