9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America

9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and 4 Who Tried to Save Her
©  2016 Brion McClanahan
354 pages

It is my dearest hope that by the time Donald Trump leaves the West Wing, the office of the presidency will have been so discredited that no one will take it seriously anymore.   Congress will take serious measures to counter executive overreach, and the American people will somberly reflect that it was a bad idea to allow so much responsibility, expectation, and power to rest on the shoulders of one man. My second dearest hope is that pigs will fly.   Brion McClanahan does what he can to take the American monarchy down a few pegs, though, by devoting half his book to exposing the greatness of a few titans as irresponsible hubris, and hailing a few forgotten men for their diligent work thwarting or ameliorating  the excesses of others.

McClanahan scrutinizes each president based on how effectively they fulfilled their  oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.   Because Article II of the Constitution, which creates the office of President, does not include a full job description,  McClanahan relies on debates from the Constitutional convention and the States’ ratification proceedings to determine what was expected of the president.  This figure was not to be a king in democratic clothing, but a guardian of the rule of law: his primary job was to keep  Congress, the only legislative body,  in check – the job that George III failed to do when he allowed Parliament to tyrannize the colonies.   Those who maintain a zealous watch are praised here; the rest, like those who invent new powers for themselves, or accept new powers from Congress through legislative fiat instead of constitutional amendment, or presume on the states or other branches' prerogatives, or allow the other branches to presume on the same, are condemned.    In general: 19th century presidents were largely faithful to the job, and 20th/21st century presidents sought to re-invent and magnify the office, and did so to the point that the old republic is now ruled by Jabba the State. (I borrow that, with gratitude and a bellylaugh, from Anthony Esolen.)

McClanahan’s critique is thus very strict, and he does not pardon men for doing pursuing good ends through improper means: that is not how the rule of law works. The Constitution is not a dead decree, a sacred writ that forces us to live in perpetuity by an 18th century society’s rules, but neither is it a piece of clay to be molded in any way. Those who wish to change the structure of US Government must do so through amendment, or  – as the North threatened to do, as the South attempted to do – remove themselves and try again.   McClanahan’s strict adherence to the original intent of the Constitution, and the observance of the rule of law, will no doubt earn the most criticism from those who read this, who believe that the government should periodically assume new powers as it “needs” them, without respecting the appropriate procedures.  But those procedures, the rule of law, protect us from merely being controlled by the whims of men.

So, who are the nine?

• Andrew Jackson, who terminated the Second Bank of the United States through extralegal means, promoted a dubious tariff that picked sectional favorites, and threatened to order the militia into South Carolina to prevent it from seceding in response to said tariffs;
• Abraham Lincoln, who failed to recognize the legal separation of the southern States from the Union, illegally made use of State militias to invade a foreign power,   presumptuously revoked habeus corpus, instituted a draft, instituted the income tax,  and helped devalue the currency for starters;
• Theodore Roosevelt, who made the president a celebrity and  inserted himself into the legislative process, assuming powers not granted to him by the Constitution, including to make presidential proclamations.
• Woodrow Wilson,  who drove legislation, attempted to institute tariffs that picked sectional favorites,  persecuted and jailed Americans for exercising the first amendment, instituted the Federal Reserve, and created powerfully intrusive regulatory bodies with no constitutional sanction;
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, who created the American conservative movement by violating so much precedent and expanding the power of his office so quickly that critics didn’t even know where to begin countering his illegal intrusions into lives of people and the economy;
• Harry S. Truman, who turned America into the guardian of the world and helped establish the military-industrial complex’s power over the American future;
• Lyndon B. Johnson , who continued overreach in both domestic and foreign policy; like FDR before him and Nixon after him, he created agencies that combined  legislative, judicial, and judicial functions, ignoring the wisdom of checks and balances; 
• Richard Nixon, who continued the same sorry trend  and pawed at the economy as well, and began the steady erosion of the dollar as a unit of real value; and
• Barack Obama, who greatly expanded Bush’s illegal wire-tapping, droning, and pushed through the Affordable Care Act, which made the sorry debacle of US healthcare even more onerous .

The two most controversial names on the list are Lincoln and Obama; Lincoln,  because most people will refuse to consider that the constitution of the United States – the little c –constitution – was much different in 1860 than in 2018,  that people did consider themselves members of the State of Maryland or the State of Vermont, and that the Union was a debatable issue;  and Obama,  because he was merely burning down a house that had already had its doors and windows pried off  and its interior walls  torn down  by previous presidents.  Oddly, even though McClanahan refers to Obama as the ‘worst’,   the chapter on said president is rather short. Frankly, I think ranking a then-sitting president was a mistake.

There are some general lessons to be learned. In the 20th century, the easiest way to gain enormous power was  through war -- either real war, or by couching social programs in the language of war.  Two, the most common violation is the president assuming responsibilities -- lawmaking and warmaking -- that are Congress's alone.  The president is not granted the authority to summon militias; only  Congress may do that, and they require a state governors' request. It doesn't matter if Congresses passes a law giving itself power to do this or that  --  that's not how the rule of law works. If they could empower themselves, they should just dispense with the formalities and issue straightforward dicta like honest oligarchs.

Following the rogues' gallery,  McClanahan then devotes the second half of his book to praising  Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler,  Grover Cleveland, and  Calvin Coolidge.  Jefferson is no surprise,  rejecting anything that smacked of monarchy in presidential treatment and , ending as he did the illegal Alien and Sedition acts.  Tyler will be unknown to most Americans; he was the first vice president to assume the office of president after Zachary Taylor died, and he spent most of his time in office vetoing Congressional actions that had no warrant in the Constitution. He was so consistent at it that both parties grew to hate him. Good on ya, Johnny!   Cleveland  was also solid on reining in Congress, and if nothing else he deserves a standing ovation for doing his best to prevent the United States from enveloping Hawaii. Coolidge, of course, has a deserved reputation for being a calm and steady hand on the rudder, intent on reversing growth as best he could within constitutional limits. The sad truth of political economy is that a bad president can increase his powers in violation of the law through his own will, while a good president's own scruples forbid him from violating the law to reverse course.

The book ends with a series of suggested amendments which would in theory curtail the power of el presidente, though given how much bureaucratic power is now vested in the sprawl of executive departments, said amendments only only be a start.  These amendments include limiting the president to one term and sharply enforcing Congress's sole responsibility as a warmaking body.

When I began reading this, I was a little worried about McClananhan's style, which -- when he is lecturing  -- can grow abrasive. It's not a style fit for communicating with people who disagree with you, and I'm happy to report that he largely reins himself in here, though his language grows a little less formal as he comes nearer to the 20th century.  I think he manages to be approachable to those who disagree with him, but very few people care more about rule of law than doing what they think should be done now, and to the devil with the consequences.  That, combined with the fact that human beings frequently revert to some tribal desire for a strong leader who can take charge and restore confidence in the future -- whether he's killing the old shaman for not pleasing the gods, or forcing everyone to buy health insurance to "fix" the cost of insurance -- makes me think all human political experiments beyond a certain scale are doomed to failure.

Happy president's day...

Related:
Recarving Rushmore, Ivan Eland. A very similar but more thorough review of each president based on their contribution to liberty, peace, and rule of law.
The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy.  The story of how quiet servants like Tyler and Cleveland were supplanted by celebrities with delusions of grandeur .
The Twilight of the Presidency, George Reedy. A masterful review of how the American monarch is hindered by the sheer expanse of his office

Lessons from a Lemonade Stand

 Lessons from a Lemonade Stand: An Unconventional Guide to Government
© 2017 Connor Boyack
145 pages

Who knew  lemonade was a gateway drug to anarchism?   Beginning with the true story of several girls who were bullied and fined by their local Officer not-so Friendly because they were selling delicious beverages without a permit from the city, Connor Bayack asks readers old and new a question: what does it mean to be lawful? Where do laws come from, and what happens when laws support oppression, or suppress something innocent or even good?   In a short work that draws from Frederic Bastiat, Hannah Arendt, and Monty Python,  Lessons from a Lemonade Stand is an education in law, and rights, as well as an appeal for youngsters to go forth and smash the state.  Or at least, sell lemonade and braid hair without a license.

Although Lessons from a Lemonade Stand  is written for teenagers,  the content is by no means juvenile,  exploring as it does the nature of law, rights, and the legitimacy of government. Drawing on Frederic Bastiat’s The Law, Boyack argues that everyone has natural rights which exist regardless of any government or other person’s respect of them, and that natural law exists to protect these rights.  Because the natural law is based on the respect and protection of these rights, laws cannot violate them and retain their own legitimacy.  The same is true for governments, which are organized to protect these rights: its existence is predicated on those rights being respected, and thus it cannot do what is unlawful for the people who created it do.  Legitimacy also requires consent, since the government has no life beyond what its members give it.  There is then a difference between something being bad because it violates  natural rights – theft and murder being the two most obvious --  and something being bad because some entity, be it a gang or a federal regulatory board,  has declared it bad.   Similarly, there is a difference between the natural rights guarding life, liberty, and property, and the statutory  ‘rights' created by governments, which vary widely from place to place and often involve infringing upon the natural rights of others. Having established the difference between violations of the natural vs statutory law, Boyack then reviews a heroes panel of people, many of them young, who have stood for what was ‘right’ against the government’s actions.  They stood in the US, in Germany, in Egypt, in Pakistan – across the world, people recognize that just because the  ‘government’ says something is right doesn’t make it so. Even those with the best of intentions can go dead wrong when they violate the rights of others.

There’s a lot of information compressed in this little book and it’s full of real-world examples that will add a little fire to the blood. I'd never heard of Helmuth Hübener, the youngest boy (17) to ever be sentenced to  death by the 'people's court' in Nazi-controlled Berlin. The moment when a person realizes that truth and right exist independent of authority -- that police, or teachers, or politicians can be absolutely wrong -- is the moment that a person begins their own journey as an independent thinker and human being.  Although I'm in the choir a book like this is preaching to,  I also found its review of law helpful.

Connor Boyack is head of the Libertas Institute, which in Utah exists to fight the lemonade police and others. In addition to organizing legislative challenges to casual tyranny, Boyack also writes children's books about the principles of economics, politics, and liberty. My favorite title is The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom.  His illustrator is Elijah Stanfield.

From The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil, based on Leonard Reed's "I, Pencil".

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right". - Henry David Thoreau, "On Resistance to Civil Government"

Medical tricorders, dirty old men, and controlling the internet

Before we head further into July, here are a few 'missed' reviews..

First up, The Patient Will See You Now. This book was part of the "Rebuilding Towards the Future" series, in which I read books about ways that ideas and work of regular people, as well as technology, are allowing us to make a better life for one another.  This particular book argues that smartphones and big data will (1) give control of their medical data to people by making them the originators of it, and (2) use that data in conjunction with everyone else's  to fight big diseases like cancer.  He documents the incredible functionality of apps and sensors that can turn smartphones into diagnostic scanners taking all measure of readings.  I was suitable awed, but so poorly-read in the area of medical technology that I can't comment too much. I was introduced to this book by EconTalk, as Russ Roberts interviewed its author back in May 2015.

Next:  Edward Abbey's Black Sun.  Abbey opens with a character very much like himself, a disgusted ex-professor who has found solace in the wilderness. For half the year,  Will Gatlin lives by himself in the southwest wilderness, manning a fire tower.  His chief human contact is the radio, and a friend of his who  writes letters entreating him to come to town and chase skirts like a normal human being.  A girl shows up, and seduction follows; he is seduced by her despite having twenty years on her, and she is seduced by the wilderness. In terms of content it's much like Hayduke Lives! -- nature writing mixed with  utter randiness. Unlike Hayduke, I finished this one, as it was rather short.

Lastly, this past week I read Who Controls the Internet, an interesting mix of internet history and law. The author begins by reminding readers of  a time when cyberspace was a discrete thing, not part of our everyday life, and as an imagined world, people hoped the usual rules would not apply. They imagined a border-less new world, where people could be who they wanted, without regard to culture or the states in power. The book then goes on to explain and document how borders re-asserted themselves.  Because the internet originated as a military research project, the US did not want to lose control of it, and other governments have no interest in losing control of their people. China, for instance, aggressively pursues internet connectivity in order to propel itself forward economically, but also works with manufacturers of internet hardware like Cisco to block 'undesirable information' from entering the Chinese web.   Much of the borderization was driven on by people themselves, however:  as more 'common' people started using the internet, they began congregating with like-minded people (fellow Chinese speakers, for instance) and when they began using the internet for goods and services, businesses like Yahoo found that having region- or language-specific portals a necessity.

As Tuesday is the Fourth of July, expect some American lit and a dash of American history or biography this week.  More internet books to come as the summer progresses, too!

I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did

I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy
© 2013 Lori Andrews
272 pages

Think about what you put on facebook. If you're like most people,  there is something in your photos, comments, likes, etc. that could get you into trouble.  I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did  explores the many ways that social networking websites expose individuals to physical and legal abuse. Written by an attorney,  the book has a legal emphasis, with many chapters on how publicly-visible facebook posts can prejudice judges against one claimant over another, or function as evidence not admitted in court when jurors begin googling people.   In many of the instances recorded here, the exposure comes not from people being careless, but from sites' privacy settings being adjusted without their knowing -- or because technology was being used to switch on their webcams without their awareness. Because of this, the author argues for a 'constitution' that would govern 'facebook nation', in essence a digital bill of rights protecting people.  Having read Future Crimes and Data and Goliath,  this was old hat for me, but a distilled reminder is always a good thing.  The catchy title and comparative slimness might draw in readers who ignore those other works, as well.    Very few congressional officials seem to know anything about cybersecurity, so I doubt we'll have a cyber bill of rights any time soon -- especially when easy violations of privacy serve the national security state so well.   In the meantime all we can do is stay paranoid.

Saving Congress from Itself

Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States and Empowering their People
© 2014 James F. Buckley
120 pages

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 11% of Americans approve of Congress’ job performance, but virtually every senator or representative who runs for reelection will receive it.  Americans want Congress to do more, even as the institution proves itself incapable of doing much of anything.  The problem lies not merely in entrenched partisanship, but in misplaced priorities.  James Buckley argues that Congress is overworked --   not with its own responsibilities but of those of governors, state legislatures, mayors, and city councils.

The core problem is the existence of “grants in aid” programs, which transfer money to the states as assistance, and which carry with them stipulations for their use.  This allows Congress to  directly influence the policies of the states by offering money, and then explaining it can only be given out if the States follow Congress’ wishes.  The creation  and administration of these grants has become a major devourer of Congressional time.   Because the number of programs granting aid has multiplied several times over since the 1960s, there are more committee reports to listen to than there are hours in the day. Buckley, who prior to serving as a federal judge was a member of the Senate, offers a sample  daily agenda as illustration. Of the fifteen items spanning 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m, only three had a national-interest scope, being items like reports from the US Army Corps of Engineers and a briefing on Iran. The rest were grant aid reports and requests, and so numerous were they that nine of the fifteen scheduled events had schedule conflicts with one another.  Congressional members either skip meetings altogether, or dash from one to the other to put in an appearance, relying on aides to fill them in on the substance.  Where is the time to read legislation, let alone pore over and discuss thousand-page bills?   (A bill forcing Congress to read the bills it passes has yet to make it out of committee consideration.)

Congressmen use their time in this fashion because it pays, at least for them.   While a national body should not be spending its time arguing and administrating local affairs,  this is the sort of thing local citizens actually expect their Congressmen to do.  When Mr. Smith goes to Washington and returns to townhalls with his constituents, they complain about bus routes and schoolrooms – and he, if he is able to finagle some funds for the locals, has an easy in come election day.   That’s not chump change, because when they’re not missing meetings or voting for bills without reading them, congressmen are constantly working to get themselves reelected, spending hours on the phone to beg for money.

This is a situation that must be altered.  Not only has Congress become patently dysfunctional, ceding every Constitutional prerogative to the executive branch,  but the weight of ever-multiplying grants is fiscally unsustainable. The United States government doesn’t generate money; it either takes it from citizens, issues bonds that future generations will have to pay for, or prints more and weakens the value of the currency.   Not only has the national government ceased to be effective, but the stipulations attached to these grants often compromises the aid as the funds are leached away on both ends in administration and in hiring lawyers who can interpret the Talmudic policy requirements.  The number of agencies is such that many have redundant -- and sometimes even conflicting -- goals, with fuzzily-defined metrics for success.  Aid can be done better, and so can government.  A constant theme in Saving Congress from Itself is that of subsidiarity, that in matters of politics, responsibility should remain at the level most capable of dealing with it. A city should take care of its own infrastructure; outside grants only prop up poor planning, like low-density sprawl,  and the ease of spending other people’s money means the funds won’t be put to their most productive use. (There’s no ‘skin in the game’, to borrow Nassim Taleb’s way of putting it.) The national Congress, with an entire world of challenges in front of it, certainly should not be deliberating on local issues.

 Buckley ends the argument with several propositions that would serve to end this legislative torpor.    To curb the amount of time officials spend working on their reelection campaigns, he suggests we (1) restrict Congressionals to two terms, and (2) limit the president to one six-year term.  More drastically,  he proposes that federally-issued grants end altogether, being phased out. Initially, money would simply be issued with no stipulations, and after a pre-fixed number of years to allow state governments to adjust their budgets,  the grants would be no more.  Buckley cites the example of Rhode Island, which was given an opportunity: if it agreed to receiving less money, there would be no rules whatsoever attached to the use.  With no outside pressure, Rhode Island was allowed to tailor its own plan to its own particular need, with effective service increasing and costs declining.  If Congress does not admit or pass the necessary legislation, a convention called by the States could also propose and pass amendments.

Saving Congress is a short little book, and Buckley doesn’t waste a word.  I was aware of political corruption in regards to military contracts, but had  little idea for how Congress conducted its business.  Truth be told, I generally imagine Congress-folk to spend their time golfing, eating, and conspiring against the public.  Buckley's argument is valuable in form as in substance. He approaches this from a nonpartisan observation that Congress is simply not performing. He doesn't deny that people still need help, but the current approach isn't doing it -- and it''s costing local cities who keep looking to Congress, and distracting Congress from its actual constitutional responsibilities.  If nothing else,  Saving Congress illustrates why the American public continues to elect their senators despite loathing Congress altogether: it's only pork on the other guy's plate.: One senator's wasteful spending is another's putting 'tax dollars back to work for you'. How about we dispense with the middle man and put our dollars to work for ourselves?


Related:
Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Chuck Marohn.

The First Congress

The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government
© 2016 Fergus Bordewich
416 pages

The first attempt at creating an American confederation resulted in a chronically bankrupt and impotent organization which no one took seriously. So mightily did it flounder that a convention was called to address its structural problems, and by way of solution they created the Constitution. Thus did the American experiment begin anew,  but a superior legal start didn't guarantee steady success. Ultimately its success would depend on the men responsible for turning ink on paper into a functional government, principally the men of the first congress who had a world of policy to establish and precedents to set.   Drawing on journals and official records, Mr. Bordewich has produced here a month-by-month chronicle of the first congress’s work in and out of session, as sectional rivalries and opposing philosophies of government went head to head for dominance. Ultimately progress came through  deal-making, and some vital decisions were made not on the floor of Federal Hall, but in the dining rooms of the influential.  Bordewich succeeds in turning months of argument amid miserable weather into a fascinating narrative.

The challenges facing the first government of the United States were outstanding: the union consisted of eleven states, many with hazy western borders. Along those borders were encamped restive Indian nations, notably the Creek, and the armed forces of Britain. The states bickered with one another over water resources and were themselves awash in debt,   North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to agree to adopt the Constitution, and the presumably-elected president George Washington was confined to bed.    Major political issues faced the nation: what to do with the debt, for instance, how to strike in practice the balance of power between the Legislature and the executive, where to established the federal capital, and what do to with the Indians. To make matters worse, the Quakers insisted on sending petitions to Congress to address slavery, even though the Constitution forbad federal action on it for twenty years after its adoption.   Each of these issues had powerful personalities eager to fight with one another.  The siting of a national capital, for instance, wasn’t merely a division between north and South.   New York and Pennsylvania were as jealous of one another as they were of the South; even John Adams loathed the thought of gracing Philadelphia or its environs with the capital.   Issues like the debt were not simply about money:  the question of whether the Federal government should take responsibility for the individual war debts of the states turned Madison from a Federalist into a Republican: he knew if the federal government took responsibility for that debt,  it would assume greater authority over the states themselves.   Slavery’s volatility needs no introduction, driving the union as it did to war.

Arguing these issues are a score of personalities, some famous but others generally overlooked. Madison is central, of course, as one of the Constitution’s key contributors and the man later tasked with presenting amendments proposed by the States to Congress. He dominates early, functioning as Washington’s prime minister in the House,  though later loses ground to Hamilton as financial matters rear their head first in the matter of the assumption of state debt, and later in the establishment of a national bank.  Other notable characters are Oliver Ellsworth, who helped establish the structure of the federal and Supreme Courts, and an antifederalist William. Maclay whose diary is a major source.   Washington and John Adams, though not congressmen,  also feature.

Bordewich's favor is with the victors,  seeing the triumph of a strong executive and Hamilton’s financial schemes over agrarian skepticism as a step forward for the United States in moving toward enlightened, modern capitalism.   His bias is not overt, though one might make a drinking game out of his referring to the Hemingses as enslaved.  In addition to the thoughtful history that makes it clear how fundamental some of the Congress’ decisions were,  Bordewich’s history also shares quite a few fascinating little tidbits. Poor Rhode Island, for instance, was bullied into joining the Union:  late into the first Congress’ term, the Rhode Island legislature failed to ratify the Constitution. Not only did Washington snub them during his tour, but the surrounding states ceased communication and transportation into the little state.   Also of interest: Thomas Jefferson learned of his appointment as Secretary of State only by reading the papers when he arrived at home!  

Bordewich’s history isn’t quite as lively as Joseph Ellis, but it is very close, a significant feat  given its greater ambition.  It makes the first Congress’ accomplishments clear, not only in establishing a new national government from the ground up –  figuring out what was needed, and how to fit it within the limits of the Constitution – but in creating union  through compromise, the most famous example  being a southern site for the capital in exchange for the wealthy cotton states agreeing to let the federal government assume the collective debt of the states.   The First Congress is superior popular history, serious, but personable still.

Related:

• Founding Brothers; The Quartet, Joseph Ellis
• James Madison and the Making of America, Kevin Gutzman
• Alexander Hamilton, Rob Chernow

The Lincoln Lawyer

The Lincoln Lawyer
© 2005 Michael Connelly
404 pages

Mickey Haller is a lawyer on the move, a criminal defender whose clients are so numerous and widespread that he conducts business from the backseat of his Lincoln Towncar.  For him, the law isn't a calling. It's a business, and the entire legal apparatus is a machine that he manipulates as best he can to the advantage of his clients. He is a charmer, a hustler -- and when a big ticket comes along, he jumps. Who wouldn't want a case to milk for a couple of years?  But Louis Roulet, a Hollywood real estate mogul who is accused of beating and attempting to rape a call girl, will be more than he bargained for.  While Haller  maintains his greatest fear is an innocent client, one who presents real consequences for failure, in Roulet he will find something worse: genuine evil.  The Lincoln Lawyer mark's Connelly's stunningly successful swift from writing cops to writing law,  introducing  a new character to his grimy Los Angeles.

I heard of this book because reviews for Grisham's Rogue Lawyer described it as a pale imitation of The Lincoln Lawyer.  Those reviews are dead-on, because while both use similar elements -- starring a cynical lawyer who works from his car, arguing with his ex-wife and being driven around by a client-turned-bodyguard -- Connelly is far superior in both plotting and story.  Haller may be cynical about the machine he operates, but he isn't a character who inspires despair.  His relationship with both of his ex-wives is cordial, even sweet;  his friends are genuine, and he, true to them. Ultimately, Haller is defiant of evil, not resigned to it.  The mechanics of the novel are far better, too. Connelly's usual pace is fast, perilous, and unpredictable, like a sprint through dark city streets, weaving through alleys and dodging blows from sinister corners. Haller soon realizes he is in over his head, as the nature of his client becomes obvious, but even while he is being dragged into unknown territory, he's crafting a possible escape that is hid from the reader. In the later courtroom scenes, when Haller steps into a testimonial minefield, it isn't know whether he saw the danger and tempted it, or planned  the provocation. The action doesn't conclude until the very last couple of pages, but Connelly's skill at keeping the reader engaged means there's no dramatic exhaustion.  I didn't expect Connelly to write law as well as he did law enforcement, but...wow, Harry Bosch has met his match. (Harry's taste in music is far superior to Halley's, though.)

The Mickey Haller series is definitely one I'll be looking to for future legal thrills.

The Cult of the Presidency

The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
© 2008 Gene Healy
264 pages

 Every four years, men and women with permanently-fixed smiles assure us that they will end corruption in D.C, get the economy moving, and end our trouble overseas, if only we will elect them President.  The claims are bold – who could budge the vast federal bureaucracy or find a solution to the hornet’s nest that is the middle east? Yet a third of the American public seems willing to believe these and greater claims, from across the political spectrum. Throughout the 20th century, the  presidency has taken on great challenges, willfully or at the urging of the public, and gathered around itself the power to take on those challenges -- or try to.   In The Cult of the Presidency, David Healy argues that not only this is a significant departure from the Constitutionally-sanctioned purpose of the president, but such centralization constitutes a malignant force.  Not only is investing such power and hope in one man dangerous, but the breadth of ambitious and responsibilities we heap upon the president's shoulders is self-defeating.

Healy begins with the Constitution and revisits the intentions of the Founders through the Federalist papers. The republic existed in its Congress, which was granted the bulk of powers, including levying taxes and declaring war. What no one wanted was an elected king, even if Alexander Hamilton did bat around the idea that the president might serve for life.  There were fears, however, that Congress might amass too much power, and thus the executive's responsibility would be to not just carry out Congress' will, but refuse to do so if said will violated the Constitution.  The presidential oath is made not to care for and advance the needs of The People, but to protect the Constitution. For most of the 19th century,  executives held to their constitutional limits; Abraham Lincoln was an obvious exception, serving as he did in extraordinary circumstances. But most of the 19th century executives were forgettable men; how many Americans could even identify men like Franklin, Garfield, and Hayes as presidents?  The opening of the 20^th century, however,  revealed a very different presidency. Wealth and power were increasing, and as money and science transformed the nation, they created a distinctly modern mindset. It declared that the power to create the future was in its hands; no institution was spared from novel attempts at completely restructuring them, sometimes in response to the new dangers of the modern era. The presidency, too, empowered not just by wealth but by the ideology of progress, escaped its constitutional bounds to become new creature.   Although lapses in presidential restraint had already happened during the administrations of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt,  Wilson was the architect of a new order.  An academic who believed the Constitution  had outlived its effective use, saw it as the president’s duty to conduct the Will of the People into action.  The president alone was voted in by the whole of the people; his was the voice that should guide the nation into the future, and the technology of the day allowed he and his successors to project their voice and exercise their will more ably, constitutional limits be damned. (And to the prisons with dissent!)

The world wars did great damage to the American political constitution, in focusing the public's attention through the radio onto the leader -- the leader, who  towered in imaginations, who could view the global conflict and distill all the information, creating a  battle plan.  As the twentieth century progressed, the ambitions of the presidency became ever more ambitious. The president was not merely spearheading a war against a particular foreign power; he was the Leader of the Free World,  casting a watchful eye over the entire globe to save it from the spectre of communism. At home, ambitions were no less awe-inspiring,  as Nixon, Johnson, Reagan and others sought to rid American society of substance abuse and poverty,  companions of the human race from the word go.  Now, when a shooting erupts, or a hurricane  washes over a city, the president is expected to arrive and say soothing things, like daddy reassuring frightened children.  Because one of the few active roles allotted to him by the Constitution is that of Commander-in-Chief,  presidential ambition has been matched by growing and inappropriate use of the military, both abroad and at home.  Although the Vietnam war and Nixon's resignation did tremendous damage to the esteem of the presidency, "Superman Returned" after 9/11, when George W. Bush became the defiant face of the nation toward terrorism.  Whatever he did, he was doing it to Make America Safe, and he didn't need a permission slip to do it -- L'état est George.   

The problem with all this power accruing to the presidency isn't just that it is merely unconstitutional, or manifestly dangerous in the abuses that have already occurred and continue to occur. (There's no shortage: the freewheeling ability to call anyone a terrorist and make them disappear, tried only in secret by the military;  drone assassinations without explicit congressional sanction, even of American citizens;  widespread data collection, and it goes on and on.)   There are limits in nature itself that ensure that the presidency is never as effective as it desires.  American foreign policy in the middle east, for instance, seems to be nothing more than a self-perpetuating stream of debacles. We meddle in Iran, and made an enemy; we used Iraq to attack them, and armed a madman; we attacked the madman, and created ISIS.  Nearer to home, the president may be the object of all our hopes and fears, but he can't stop hurricanes and the economy is not a machine to be manipulated. Like nature, it fights back.   Even when things seem to be going merrily, it's of little avail: the public only cares what fresh triumphs Caesar has wrought. If the economy tanks right before an election, woe to the incumbent party.  All this assumes the president is making competent decisions to begin with, when throughout the 20th century the office-holder has become increasingly isolated from reality -- surrounded by the party faithful and underlings who are awed by the office or have no incentive to tell him he's erring. So much power and adulation is not only dangerous to governance, but to the mental health of the occupant,  held in godlike awe and expectation to fix all the problems, and offer or at least project strength and comfort when a crisis erupts.   

What's the solution? Well, there isn't one, really. Congress can impose limits on the president, as it did with the War Powers act, but it has to be willing to hold him accountable. These days, Congress' chief function seems to be to pay lobbyists and run for office.  Ultimately, reigning in the cult may lie in waking up the cultists, the American people, who instead of being Egyptians genuflecting before Pharoah,  should return to their 18th century roots of viewing with deep suspicion any man presuming to order their lives about.  The current slate of men and women offers little hope in that regard, however, as the adulating masses cheering on Trump and Sanders obviously believe that one man can overcome reality itself.  There may be hope, however, in the fact that two figures with no real affiliation or loyalty to their party have populist support; it is a signal that Americans are weary of business as usual and might respond to third-party approaches.

(Happy president's day.)

Related:Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, Ivan Eland.
The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government, F.H. Buckley. Argues that an over-responsible president or prime minister is a problem not only for the United States, but for the United Kingdom and Canada as well.  I read this last July and will read it again this year in hopes of giving it a proper review. Cult of the Presidency was read last January and again last July.

Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves
© 2015 Adam Levin
288 pages

 Looking for a growth industry? Try identity theft. Over a third of Americans have experienced some degree of outside use of their accounts, and that number will only rise as our personal data is collected in more and more places.  News reports may have alerted citizens to the need to destroy physical mail carrying their social security number and other personal information, but  even the most vigilant of privacy-protectors can’t stop outside forces from sacking institutions that use that data. Big box stores, transnational health insurance providers, even the federal government: all are vulnerable.  In Swiped, Levin maintains that if a given reader hasn’t already experienced identity theft, the odds are good that they will in the near future.   Instead of consoling oneself with the pleasant notion that such a crime can’t happen to them, he urges readers to minimize their risk, monitor their accounts, and take precautions to manage the damage.

Personal cybersecurity, covered in only a chapter of books like Future Crimes, takes center stage here, and with chapters especially devoted to identity theft arising from tax fraud and healthcare systems,  it makes for an especially pertinent read for tax season. The heaviest burden for action against identity theft is laid on the individual, for we are much more quick-footed about adapting behavior to threats than institutions, and have the most control over releasing information. Regardless of the precautions taken -- the savvy exercised -- at some point Levin believes that most people's personal accounts will be compromised.  He recommends constant scrutiny of personal records: daily bank check-ins, thorough examinations of "benefits received" from insurance companies, etc.  Finally, Levin urges readers to have an action plan for when -- not if -- they are compromised.  Know what accounts you need to freeze, what forms to file -- and don't think it stops with your death, either, because there are plenty of operators who comb the obituaries for accounts to borrow. While his emphasis is on personal vigilance, Levin also has chapters detailing ideas for business security culture, and national-level legislation.   Swiped is fast and abounding with ideas on 'data hygiene', and its emphasis on action rather than alarm makes it an welcome follow-up to Data and Goliath and Future Crimes.

Related:
Ten Don'ts On Your Digital Devices, Daniel G. Bachrach, Eric J. Rzeszut

American Cicero

American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll
© 2010 Bradley Birzer
230 pages

When Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed the Declaration of Independence, he was risking the biggest fortune on the American mainland.  But Carroll had yearned for independence for more than a decade before he put pen to paper, before strife ever disrupted the happy relationship between British America and Parliament.  Whatever the risk, if the cause was right Carroll could have taken no other course;  more than any other founder, he was steeped in the classical tradition and its traditions of civic virtue. When he died in 1832,  having outlived all the other founders, he was hailed as the Last of the Romans.   In  American Cicero, Bradley Birzer presents a study of his life, the tale of a Roman in a nation of would-be Jacobins.

 Many of the founding generations were besotted with the classical world;   they studied the classics not as segregated and dusty literature to be discussed in clubs with other eccentrics, but as the fount of worldly knowledge. Metaphysics, politics, natural philosophy, and even farming wisdom were the gift of Greece and Rome to the American frontier, and a study of classical political constitutions would later inform the creation of the American bedrock.   Educated for fourteen years in England and France, Carroll was even more formed by the classics than his contemporaries, who all adopted Latin pen names whenever they wrote in public forums. He considered the ancients to be not only teachers, but friends – especially Cicero, whose Stoicism would undergird Carroll’s political philosophy.

 Though he is little remembered today, Carroll’s early career was accomplished; after creating a reputation as a champion-patriot in  furious exchange of letters, he served as an emissary to Canada; later he attended the Second Constitutional Convention and signed both it and the Articles of Confederation; still later, when the Constitution supplanted the Articles, he was elected Maryland’s first Senator.  This was, Birzer writes, utterly appropriate given how much ink Carroll had spilled in the service of creating a genuine Republic, especially concerned with the role that  a Senate would play in maintaining an even keel amid populist furor.  If he is forgotten today,  it may owe to his  well-deserved reputation as a critic of mass democracy: like John Adams, he regarded pure democracy as dangerously unstable, a threat to the liberty of minorities and the right of property.

 Carroll was especially conscious of the threat of mobs given his status as a Catholic in a predominately Protestant world.  In a list of the signers of the Declaration, Carroll is alone in his Roman devotion.  Despite Maryland’s birth as a safe haven for Catholics fleeing the persecution of the Reformation, the state was heavily settled by Protestants and actually became one of the most hostile to Catholicism. In this age, hostility toward a man’s religion didn’t mean calling him names. Seizing his land and setting him on fire were more likely. The despoiling of Catholics had happened in England, and could very well happen in America were the Rule of Law not enthroned.

 Carroll feared the rage of a mob, and he had a great deal of property to lose – but he was a man who lived in hope.  His faith was more cosmopolitan than most, as he believed all those followed the moral laws of Jesus would see his face regardless of their doctrinal differences with the Church.   This universal stance was not sheer pragmatism on Carroll’s part, though he could not expect to live in peace with his neighbors, let alone play a part in the public sphere, were he antagonistic toward his Protestant brethren.   The Stoicism of Cicero also deeply informed Carroll’s beliefs, especially the belief that each man was imbued with a divine spark, a piece of the Cosmic logos,  and that this made every man and woman kin in a fundamental way, and opened the possibility of a universal republic.

 A genuine Republic was possible only if people conducted themselves with virtue, however, obeying the laws of Nature and its God;   let passion reign, and the fruits of civilization will be felled under a barbarian storm.  Carroll’s staunch belief in the need for virtue predisposed him to favor administration by a relatively small group of men, chosen for the strength of their character and themselves limited by government that kept the inherent abuses of government to a minimum. (The choosing of an American president by Congressionally-appointed Electors reflected the value other founders saw in a moderated  national democracy.) He believed in genuine aristocracy, but not the arbitrary sort.    Men’s characters were to be judged by their submission  to law, both divine and civic. Before the law that bound the cosmos and the republic together, no man could stand superior.

 Like Marcus Aurelius, Carroll is an easier man to admire from afar than to enjoy having supper with. John Adams thought him a marvelous specimen of humanity, but Mr. Adams had a moral severity of his own. Contemporaries marveled at his intelligence and devotion to the Patriot cause, arguing as he did against the abuses of the king and Parliament with respect to the common law, but his long education and affluent upbringing seemed to deny him that charismatic common touch that so endeared the public to men like Jefferson, or later Lincoln. He was highly esteemed by his peers, and sometimes admired by the people, but when he passed away he was mostly remembered as a historical curiosity, the last living signer of the declaration. Like Dickinson, he helped to shape popular rage against taxes and government meddling into a respectable cause,  and is thus worth considering even if the cause took on a more incautious nature than either man cared for. 

The Cost of Liberty

The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson
© 2013 William Murchinson
257 pages

"Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us."

Can you claim to be a Founding Father if you didn't sign the Declaration of Independence?  What if not signing it is your crowning moment of infamy?  This biography of John Dickinson is part of a series on the lives of forgotten founding fathers, but his name may ring a bell moreso than the rest .Who beyond revolutionary historians has any idea who Luther Martin is, for instance?  But Dickinson was the antagonist of both 1776 and an episode or two of John Adams, where he opposes the titular solon's argument that independence is the only route  left to the American people.  In 1776, he is cast as a sneering and  aloof aristocrat,  more concerned with protecting his money than with  rights and liberties. In the other, he is a sniveling knave, horrified at the prospect of having to take a stand against the Mother Country. The Cost of Liberty gives the lie to both accounts, delivering an portrait of a man who knew how to fight for his principles, and would – before his peers at the bar and in Congress, or on the field of battle. John Dickinson made his name infamous by resisting the Declaration of Independence, but he was a leader of the Revolution even so , putting pen to paper to cry “Injustice” against Parliament long before Congress was ever assembled.   Though after 1776 he never achieved any national greatness, he had already made himself a champion in the eyes of his contemporaries.

While he never signed the Declaration of Independence, nor would he play a part in the national government, Dickinson was nonetheless a leader in the revolution. For Dickinson, of course, it was less a revolution than a restoration.   Brought up in a well-placed Quaker family, he  sought advancement in the law, studying at the Inns of Court in London.  His upbringing and this experience on the home isle gave him a keen appreciation for deep English roots; though he and Thomas Jefferson would eventually become friends, even collaborating on the Virginian’s Necessity for Taking Up Arms, they approached human liberty from different perspectives. Whereas Jefferson believed in natural rights,  Dickinson had a  less idealistic conviction. They might be instilled in us by the Creator, but they were guaranteed only through law and force. Hundreds of years of excellent strife had given the colonists their rights as Englishmen, and it was for that dignity Dickinson would fight.  He was a constitutionally prudent man; when the people of Pennsylvania asked the king to assume direct control over their colony, overriding the Penn family which 'owned' it in a propriety charter, Dickinson resisted:  Pennsylvanians had lived and contended with the Penns for decades, and had earned a status as the freest colony on the seaboard. Were the king to assume direct control,   all those accomplishments could be cast to the wind; even if the king were the noblest of fellows, his governors might not be, and Pennsylvanians could find themselves set back to square one, having to fight for their freedoms all over again, and this time against a far stronger authority. The resistance Dickinson would later display against the Declaration of Independence did not stem from any special loyalty to the king, but more to an acute sense that great changes have unpredictable results. 

William Murchinson takes readers through the pivotal early years of the Revolution, where Dickinson takes the lead.  His Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania not only gave strength to resistance against the Tea and Coercive acts at home, but generated popular support in England. Dickinson was never one for rabble-rousing, urging mobs to commit violence against the authorities, but he did argue passionately for civil resistance.   Dickinson's fall from grace came in 1776 when the American temper was so aroused against Britain that war had already erupted.  Dickinson continued to hope that changes might be effected cautiously, still in connection to England, but the blood shed at Lexington and Concord lit a fire under the king, as well. The rebels would pay for their defiance, and so the path of reconciliation was ignored by both the patriots and the king, to the dismay of men like Dickinson in America and Edmund Burke in Britain.

After the war, Dickinson would continue to lead at the local level in both Pennsylvania and Delaware, but he would not assume great office and his name has faded with the ages.  Murchison's reappraisal of this man of peace, prudence, and principled resistance is a welcome balm.

In the words of his friend, Thomas Jefferson...

"A more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us. Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution."

The English People on the Eve of Colonization

The English People on the Eve of Colonization
© 1954 Wallace Notestein
302 pages

   If there was ever an exemplar for not judging a book by its cover, The English People on the Eve of Colonization is it. The binding is plain and burdened by an unwieldy title that seems to threaten readers with clouds of dust and pages of population statistics upon opening. Instead,  Wallace Notestein delivers a lively social history that opens the hood (or bonnet, if you prefer, since we’re looking at the English) of Stuart England, revealing the social machinery at work inside.  Here are the daily lives of men both great and small – the details of their work,  their concerns – and an examination of the institutions which create and sustain civilization Notestein’s chatty survey gives life to farm laborers, country gentlemen, sheriffs and justices of the peace; he also takes us to the Inns of Court and the universities, the very marrow of intellectual life.    Although there are brief chapters on Parliament and the corporations that would lead the way in exploring the globe and settling the new world, the emphasis here is on the small and ordinary, and delivered in so personable a fashion that one is immersed in the life of centuries gone by without realizing he’s being educated.  Religion isn't addressed directly, beyond the life of the church as a community,  which is the only hiccup. 

Related:

• Daily Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke
• The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Daniel Boorstin
• Any social history of the Gies, but especially Life in a Medieval Village, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages, and Life in a Medieval City. 

The Colonial Experience

The Americans: The Colonial Experience
© 1967 Daniel Boorstin
528 pages

          

   Daniel Boorstin’s The Americans delivers a cultural history of the American colonies, beginning first with profiles on the disparate groups that settled on the eastern seaboard (Puritans, Quakers, and Cavaliers), and then following the growth of American religion, law, and education in the new world.  Though appearing weighty, being five hundred pages or so, the expanse flies by in a multitude of comparatively short chapters, divided (appropriately enough) into thirteen sections.  This is an inbetween America, neither raw nor finished.  For students of American history, this is deftly written, and gives a feel for how truly distinct the settling populations were, both in their origins and in their evolution.  While the Pennsylvania Quakers and New England Puritans set out to create utopias on a fresh plain, for instance,  Virginia’s settlers knew perfectly well that the utopian mark already existed in England, and their intention was to re-create its social institutions. Despite the wide variety of these cultures,  constant resettlement from one area to another in the pursue of fresh land ensured a mix of experience, and  prevented rabid clannishness.   Despite being mostly agrarian, agriculture would be the nascent American civilization’s weak point: flush with land,  no one had any interest in putting a great deal of imagination or work into improving their lot. Once tobacco or cotton had drained the soil, they could simply move on.  Otherwise,  the abounding energy and optimism of the Americas, so distant from the institutions of Europe, allowed for enthusiastic questioning that led to early triumphs in technological and scientific innovation. For Americans interested in the lives of the founders, this provides an enormous amount of  storied context.

Related:
Daily Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke

Rise of the Warrior Cop

Rise of the Warrior Cop: the Militarization of America's Police Forces
© 2013 Radney Balko
400 pages

A man's home is his castle...but now the cops have bettering rams.. Among the sins of George the III, according to the Declaration, was his practice of keeping a standing army.  Militias might be raised to defend against outside invasion, but they dispersed upon peacetime; standing peacetime armies were regarded always the weapons of tyrants. In Warrior Cop,  author argues that the nation’s civil police forces have been turned into a standing army, beginning in the 1970s after the Watts Riots but even more quickly in the 9/11 era.    Police violence has been especially notorious in the last year, but the recent spate of deaths is not an anamoly. As Warrior Cops indicates, not only have police forces assumed a more militaristic attitude in recent decades, but they now come armed with the army’s weapons.

In setting up his argument, Balko gives a brief history of law enforcement in the United States which expands in the mid-20^th century, during a rising crime wave that put stress on the government to “do something”.  Law and order rose to become a mainstay, with liberals arguing for social programs that would combat poverty and reform criminals, and conservatives advocating  stern enforcement and prison expansion.  The latter approach met with more popular support, but few could predict what Nixon’s approach would result in. Balko details several problems that would arise in the decades to follow: first, the excessive formation and use of SWAT teams, initially devise to deal with extraordinary situations beyond the means of beat cops.   This initially meant high-powered rifles, but it wasn’t long before SWAT officers were lobbing grenades into private homes.  At the same time as they were using more brutal weapons, they were deployed for mundane ends, like serving arrest warrants. This stemmed from a use-it-or-lose-it mentality: if cities couldn’t point to any recent uses of  the team’s training and equipment, how could it justify further expenses to the public?  

Fortunately for them, that problem soon fell away when D.C. initiated programs that would funnel money to purchase arms, and equipment itself, to the cities.  This made it easier for local law enforcement agencies to purchase military  surplus, from the practical to the insane: one California city attempted to requisition a submarine.  Even as the wall keeping civil and military uses of force crumbled, the legal walls protecting citizens from illicit police force vanished together: warrantless raids and arrests skyrocketed after 9/11, leading to tragedy after tragedy.  Although advocates for “no-knock raids” maintained that they prevented intended arrests from destroying evidence and scampering away, the sudden and violent invasion of homes by  masked men screaming obscenities was time and again met with alarm, confusion, and legitimate attempts at defense that led to slaughter, especially tragic given how many times SWAT teams invaded the wrong house. Still worse, in the modern age new Federal programs helping military officers transition into the police force, or programs training police for anti-terrorist programs, mold the law enforcement mind in the pattern of  search-and-destroy soldiers.

Despite all of this, Balko sees some meager grounds for hope.  Legal objections to no-knock raids and police employed military equipment have for the most part fallen away, but in the light of widespread videography by citizens,   abuses are much more publicized -- and some parts of the war on drugs are finally losing support.  By way of offering grounds of hope, Balko looks at efforts at reintroducing community policing, in which police officers build relationships with the communities they patrol (preferably on foot) and create solutions that don't involve ramming down doors and rushing in with MP-5s at the ready. This is a profoundly disturbing book, but worth any American's attention, especially in light of the recent deaths at the hands of policemen in Balitmore and New York.

The Internet Police

The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online (and the Cops Followed)
© 2014 Nate Anderson
 310 pages

 Not since the steam engine has the world been so utterly transformed than by the Internet. Originally a military network, it is now infrastructure, undergirding modern life to a degree only surpassed by electricity.The internet is not just a physical construct of tubes and boxes; it is a social world unto itself, one created by its users.  Like every aspect of society, the internet has its dark alleys,  Mos Eisley-like havens of villainy. The Internet Police takes readers on a ridealong into those alleys, exploring the world of internet crime -- and internet policing.

The Internet Police opens with a chapter on the difficulties of imposing order in the first place. In the first chapter,  the author shares the joint scheme of an enterprising cyberlibertarian, Sean Hastings, and a presumably lunanical bootleg radioman turned king of his own private island, Roy Bates. The latter took over an English gun platform from WW2, declared it his personal fiefdom, and defended it with a shotgun before settling down to eake out a living taxing seagulls and the like. The former, who decided what the world needed was a secure place where servers could host the materials respectable governments banned (like online casinos and pirating), proposed renting space in the platform.  The thing was virtually inaccessible (har har), but could connect to British web infrastructure fairly easily. The adventure didn't work out terribly well, however, as Bates had an itching for respectability and a penchant for being dictatorial, neither of which allowed him to coexist with the pirate-haven for too long.

After concluding from the collapse of HavenCo that even a freeform place like the web needs law and order, Anderson reveals how the same has been enacted, despite the internet serving for both an extension of preexisting crime and the opportunity for new ones. Take sexual harrassment, for instance, which has been liberated from bars and dimly-lit parking garages. Computer mics and cameras,  some integral to the machines themselves, can be converted into the eyes and ears of tech-savvy voyeurs.  Readers may be familiar with trojan-horse style malware that uses seemingly innocuous bits of software, downloaded unsuspectingly through email or updates, which then  install and activate programs that can record keystrokes or open the machine up for remote control. Malicious use is not limited to petty lechers;  Collection agencies may use the software to obtain photographs of an unpaid-for computer in use, but their agents -- proving that all power in human hands is liable to be abused --  are recorded here using it to leer at and blackmail customers who were caught in a state of nature before the camera. Police officers using the same means succumb to the same ends.

While collections companies and perverts may invade others' computers with the primitive justification, "Who's gonna stop me?", the police are an altogether different story.  In an ideal world, they are to be accountable to the public and its law. Part of The Internet Police is a history of the myriad of ways the government has attempted to rein in the internet first through laws that allow for what is still called "wiretapping", despite the fact that it now consists more of  integrating police software with internet service providers' to scrutinize information being sent and received from a given IP address.  Governments also strong-arm telecommunications companies,  forcefully suggesting that they build in 'backdoors' to their devices and networks to allow Uncle Sam or the Crown to easily find out what a given gadget is up to.  The NSA specializes in such backdoors.  Courts as well as the police can be used to take down 'criminals', although here Anderson's review is limited to the seemingly endless attempts by music companies to prosecute consumers for file-sharing.  Unlike going after the programs themselves (Napster being the most famous, with Limewire and Kazaa other heavyweights), these campaigns rendered only a lot of bad publicity.

While there's a lot of digital crime not mentioned here (pirated video games and DRM, identity theft), The Internet Police is a fast read and one that opens up a fascinating peek into how the internet is continuing to reshape the world we live in.  Opening with the utterly bizaare story of Sealand and serving up legal thrillers in miniature, it entertains while serving as a heads up as to how vulnerable we are using unsecured systems.

Related:
New York Times article, "Spyware vs Spyware: Nate Hood's Internet Police"
Der Spiegel article (English), "Shopping for Spy Gear"
CBS is about to air a cybercrimes show that has my interest: CSI: Cyber.

Nullification

Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century
© 2011 Thomas E. Woods, Jr
309 pages

In a game of word association, chances are that 'nullification' would not meet with flattering replies. Nullification is a word associated with the Civil War, or the Civil Rights movement, of the southern states blocking attempts at racial equality by insisting on their own right to declare a federal law unconstitutional, and thus null and void. But nullification has a richer and nobler history than its modern critics realize; in Nullification,  Tom Woods explains the legal basis of the principle, demonstrates its use throughout early American history, and points out areas in which the states have adopted it as a tool today.

Nullification's sanction, Woods argues, rests in the little-c constitution of the United States. Though today the fifty states may seem like mere departments of the national polity, in the beginning this was not so. The united States began life not as a nation, but an agreement between thirteen, and with specific purposes. Treaties from the period enumerate the individual states, demonstrating their primacy. If not the States, who may declare a given law unconstitutional? The Supreme Court has assumed that role ('judicial review'), but as part of the government, how can it be expected to police itself?  The individual States, however, have existence without the national government, and it exists, or was supposed to have existed, as their handmaiden -- not the other way around. Theirs is the right to declare the actions of Congress, the President, and the Court unconstitutional -- but theirs is likewise the responsibility to create measures for frustrating the government's knavish tricks.

This they have done, from as early as the Adams presidency til today. Nullification first came onto the scene after the Federalist congress put into effect the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made defaming the government and its officials a crime. (Defaming the government was, until the rise of baseball, the national sport, and especially loved by Jefferson, Hamilton, and their respective parties.) Straightaway governors began throwing up barriers to federal agents attempting to arrest mouthy citizens. They did the same when, during the Napoleonic Wars, President Jefferson imposed an embargo on Europe -- an embargo that might have driven American trade to its knees. The reality and the threat of nullification continued to force the hands of overambitious executives. Today, legislative sabotage continues as states decriminalize marijuana use even as the federal  government continues to insist it's a no-no.   Given that the US attorney general is now retreating from parts of the War on Drugs (starting with that odd habit of theirs of seizing  property that has been declared guilty of participating in a crime), the principle seems just as potent.

Nullification is a small book (~165 pages, not counting the documents appended to it), but is a very worthy introduction to compact theory, in which the States are legally superior and not subordinate to the national state. It's also a respectable attempt to rescue nullification from its historical taint, but loses some points given that Woods never squarely addresses the threatened use of it during the 1960s, maintaining only that nullification is a weapon that can be used unjustly as easily as it can be for justice.  I was also hoping for other kinds of nullification to be covered (like jury nullification), but Woods focused only on formal measures by the States themselves.  Altogether it's a solid intro to the subject, and I am all for throwing wrenches into the machinery.


Related:
The Liberty Amendments, Mark Levin,  all of which aim to restore to the fifty states their original power over the central government.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

The Strange Career of Jim Crow
© 1955, 1965 C. Van Woodward
245 pages

            Fifty years ago, racial and civil unrest swept the United States as organized resistance to the morally outrageous and legally dodgy practice of segregation strengthened throughout the country. Ten years before the Civil Rights movement hit its apogee, C. Van Woodward penned a history of segregation as public policy that offered grounds for hope. Far from being a natural and deeply rooted product of the South, Jim Crow laws were a relatively new creation. Dating in the South only to the late 19^th century, Jim Crow’s claims to southern stock were shallow indeed, and could theoretically be destroyed as quickly as it had been instilled.

            Laws prescribing racial separation were not native to the South, Woodward writes, and would have been utterly untenable in the plantation atmosphere where blacks and whites alike ‘worked’ together.  Blacks and whites were accustomed to one another, familiar even. In the north, however, blacks remained a strange ‘other’ that whites sought distance from, and so codes prevented too much social mingling between the two races.  Northerners visiting the South immediately after the war were astonished by the lack of racial uproar.  It took decades for the dust to settle after the war,  for a new universal race-relations norm to be established throughout the region;  unfortunately for blacks, and for the country, such norms were set in an atmosphere toxic to harmony.

            The latter half of the 19^th century was one of constant, dramatic change; the pace of the industrial revolution quickened, throwing all the developed world into an uproar. Millions streamed from the farms into the cities,  national economies reeled in prosperity and fraud; an entire economic system was being rebuilt in the United States as power shifted fully from the farms to the factories, from plantation lords to captains of industry and coal-barons.  Black Americans would feature in this chaos,  as they were seized on as a pliable voting bloc. The alliances that courted them were both strange and hopeful. Not only did the old plantation caste solicit the support of their former slaves against their mutual antagonists, the burgeoning commercial and industrial class that had its own means of exploitation, but the Populists sought to unite poor blacks and whites alike against their foes, both the plantation elite and the railroad titans.  But blacks, like any Americans, could not be counted on to vote universally alike, en bloc – and if they could not be conveniently used , the reconstructionists had little interest in bothering with them. When the old aristocracy returned to the ballot boxes and overturned many of the laws and institutions that maintained civil rights,  nothing was said.  At the same time, the United States had become a global empire,   seizing Cuba and the Philippines from Spanish hands; its civil and military leaders were cast into the positions of being the white masters of colonial inferiors. Just as the power of the slaveholder poisoned him against his fellow man, so to did colonial power poison the soul of America in general,  penetrating not just in the extremities of empire, but shaping racial attitudes in the heartland. As the United States’ leadership grew accustomed to seeing itself as a superior white few managing with benefaction the affairs of a colored multitude, and having to endure the multitude’s constant ungrateful troublemaking,  racial relations in the United States took a dive.  Race codes multiplied and strengthened within a generation’s time.

     That it happened so quickly gives Woodward hope;  surely peace and justice could be restored as quickly as the northerners had adopted the plantation mindset; surely southern society could dismantle its codes as quickly as it had put them up. Segregation could be a momentary madness, a fever like Prohibition;  hate need not be the last word. Indeed, in the reprint of Strange Career produced in the 1960s, Woodward is able to track the history of the Civil Rights movement. Over a half-century old at this point, Strange Career remains of interest to American historians interested race relations, but especially southerners curious about reconstruction; both will find this look at politics and culture quite insightful.