Two admirable news stories from The South

These are both really wonderful events:

First Black Mayor in City Known for Klan Killings
New York Times

The city of Philadelphia, Miss., where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers in 1964 in one of the era’s most infamous acts, on Tuesday elected its first black mayor.

James A. Young, a Pentecostal minister and former county supervisor, narrowly beat the incumbent, Rayburn Waddell, in the Democratic primary. There is no Republican challenger...




Texas Mayor Trades Job for Romance in Mexico
Wall Street Journal

J.W. Lown, the mayor of San Angelo in West Texas, recently narrated a video touting his town as a great place to live. Then he left to pursue another passion.

Mr. Lown resigned this week -- less than a month after winning a fourth two-year term in a landslide -- saying he was leaving to carry on a relationship with a Mexican man who had been living illegally in the U.S.
...

With his partner unable to legally remain in the U.S., the mayor said he realized around election day -- May 9 -- that he faced a choice: betray his duty to abide by the law by helping the man hide from immigration authorities; end the relationship, or join him in Mexico. He chose Mexico.

Mr. Lown's colleagues and constituents have rallied around him. Some said they hadn't known he was gay. Others were surprised he got involved with an illegal immigrant. Neither issue drew widespread censure or disapproval.

"In this neck of the woods," said Councilman Johnny Silvas, "people are accepting."
...

Slick use of dehumanization

The Thursday deadline passed without action, and today the Nickelsville tent city is still there. Maybe Hizzoner decided it would be bad to express support for the homeless one day (see yesterday), and take away one of their places to live the next.

And notice how concerned the Mayor's Office is about the human dimension:

City crews placed more than a dozen no-trespassing signs in and around the camp, dubbed "Nickelsville" in defiance of Mayor Greg Nickels, about two hours before the deadline of a 72-hour eviction notice.

But the 5 p.m. deadline passed without incident at the site in an industrial area in the Highland Park neighborhood.

"We don't announce when the cleanup will happen," said Karin Zaugg Black, Nickels' spokeswoman. Source

"Cleanup." Cleanup is what you do to garbage. People get evicted.

Don't dehumanize the residents of Nickelsville, Ms. Black. Call the eviction what it is.

More: Mayor, Zaugg claim no shelter shortage, define controversy as "political"

"Unintended Consequences"

The current issue of Newsweek relates the following about expansion of the scope of Patriot Act snooping, and how it caught Eliot Spitzer:

The Patriot Act gave the FBI new powers to snoop on suspected terrorists. In the fine print were provisions that gave the Treasury Department authority to demand more information from banks about their customers' financial transactions. Congress wanted to help the Feds identify terrorist money launderers. But Treasury went further. It issued stringent new regulations that required banks themselves to look for unusual transactions (such as odd patterns of cash withdrawals or wire transfers) and submit SARs—Suspicious Activity Reports—to the government. Facing potentially stiff penalties if they didn't comply, banks and other financial institutions installed sophisticated software to detect anomalies among millions of daily transactions. They began ranking the risk levels of their customers—on a scale of zero to 100—based on complex formulas that included the credit rating, assets and profession of the account holder.

Another element of the formulas: whether an account holder was a "politically exposed person." At first focused on potentially crooked foreign officials, the PEP lists expanded to include many U.S. politicians and public officials who were conceivably vulnerable to corruption.

The new scrutiny resulted in an explosion of SARs, from 204,915 in 2001 to 1.23 million last year. More

Spitzer, for all his faults, has not been accused of any corruption, has he? The Patriot Act has become the Puritan Act -- and a big Opposition Research drift net.

"Get them to print you a t-shirt with 'Fascist' on it"

Papers, please

I'm concerned about Real ID, although not quite to the degree of some of the Black Helicopter crowd. But I am one of those people who refused to join the Safeway Club for the longest time--hey, my money ought to be enough to earn a discount, dammit.

However, the Bush drive to get law-abiding citizens into the big database via their driving licenses is something even some state governments are opposing--albeit under the excuse of resisting an unfunded mandate. Maine and Idaho have already opted out, and Washington may join them. In fact, I have what some might consider a radical proposal.

Washington should abolish the Driving License.

Yes, because Real ID will be abused to exert state control over individuals. But also because the ostensible purpose of the Washington Driving License--to ensure a sufficient level of competency among drivers--is clearly an abject failure. I won't turn this into a detailed screed, I'll just ask you, dear reader, to look at your fellow drivers. Should most of them have a license? I rest my case. Clearly, most of the money we spend in testing and licensing is wasted.

My solution is not to license people at all, but rather to deal with unqualified drivers via law enforcement. Insurance would still be required. But, you are asking, what about licensing and registering cars? I'm not suggesting abolishing the entire DMV, just their jurisdiction over people; the DMV would still license and register cars, since those need to be taxed, and for local law enforcement purposes as well.

The beauty of what I am proposing is that it will work whether or not Washington opts out of Real ID, in that the state can fall back on the optional, non-driving State Identification Card. If Washington opts out, everyone who needs identification can still get the SIC. But if Washington is somehow compelled to comply with Real ID, it could pay for it out of savings from abolishing the Driving License; civil liberties groups would be satisfied, as only people who agreed to get an SIC would go into the federal database.

People who decline the SIC can still satisfy needs for proof of identity by using photo credit cards; I'm sure the credit card companies don't misuse cardholder data. Plus, there's the Social Security Card -- face it, don't we all chuckle at the Not For Identification line?