The Florida Frontier - September, 2007 ------------------------------- Article Index I. Litigation Derangement Syndrome Returns, by Ashley Emans II. The Failure of our Free Press, by Lyle Kossis III. Fighting Force with Force, by Matt Mitchell IV. An Inside Look at the White House, by Matt Dean V. An Inconvenient Conjecture, by Bryan Griffin ------------------------------- I. Litigation Derangement Syndrome Returns Ashley Emans Since July 10, The University of Florida administration has been in a legal battle with the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX), otherwise known as "Brothers Under Christ." After applying to be a Registered Student Organization, the eight boys of BYX were refused student group status on the basis that their membership process is discriminatory. Only males who are Christian are allowed into the brotherhood. Official standing would mean BYX could meet in campus facilities, advertise on university property, recruit on school grounds, have office/storage space, own a student organization mailbox, have access to tables, bulletin boards, computers, and listservs; apply for student funds, and run a student organization email and website. BYX has 21 chapters nationwide, most of which are at public universities. The fraternity's attorneys from the Christian Legal Society and the Alliance Defense Fund wish to declare UF's policy unconstitutional via the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. UF claims BYX has not actually been rejected yet, as it has not completed the application process. No matter; since UF plans to deny BYX anyway, why bother with the needless paperwork? Beta Upsilon Chi v. Machen has a decent shot of success for the members of BYX. In December UGA went through the same lawsuit with the same representation, and BYX came out on top. At the University of Missouri BYX also won a federal lawsuit for chapter establishment. The legal precedent is clearly in favor of those who support the fraternity. The fact is that many of the 650 UF groups already discriminate by sex, race, or other factors. Here is just a sampling of clubs with Registered Student Organization status: Progressive Black Men, Women's Chorale, Men's Ice Hockey, Men's Lacrosse...and the list goes on and on. "It's really a case of the University of Florida singling out Christian fraternities and sororities," said Timothy J. Tracey, litigation counsel for the Center for Law & Religious Freedom at the Christian Legal Society. "Regardless of name, none of the (mentioned) organizations limits its membership to a single sex...all of the above referenced organizations affirm in their constitutions that they do not discriminate on the basis of sex." wrote Amy Hass, assistant general counsel for UF. Let's stop being so legal and start being real: all of these clubs are clearly exclusionary. Fussing over whether girls should play men's lacrosse is a perfect example of what I call our society's Litigation Derangement Syndrome. Many anti-Christian rulings are only achieved through legal gymnastics and the exploitation of law loopholes, anyways. The "Independent" (read: slaves to the DailyKos) Florida Alligator editorial board wrote a BYX piece on July 17 that was dripping with ignorant sarcasm and hatred. Let's look at just a few samplings: * "Now BUC (sic), along with its very own frogs, blood water and locusts in the form of lawyers, is seeking damages against UF for upholding its school principles...we can't help but wonder if Jesus would really condone this lawsuit. Even if he had the option of suing for his mistreatment, we doubt he would've taken Judas to court. Maybe we're forgetting the commandment "Thou shalt sue if thou is clearly wrong but has run out of viable options."" * They call BYX an "elite circle" and jokingly refer to discrimination as a "treasured American value." * "Why should student tuition money go to a group that doesn't represent the beliefs of all students?" Well, NORML doesn't represent my beliefs, but it is a student organization. Universities are supposed to serve as many people as possible. * They also have more bad-tasting Christian puns than is room here to name. This is what we expect now from the Alligator when no one is there to hold it accountable. Perhaps the left is just angry that the Christian Right has wisened up to using the judicial system. Echoes of the left seem imminent, "Hey! Hijacking the American legal system is how WE impose our policies upon innocent people!" "UF's claim strikes me as inconsistent with what the facts actually appear to be," Tracey said. Standing up for the rights of Christians just does not fit the agenda of diversity-conscious UF. Because Christian males are not the minority, does that mean their rights are fair game to take away? Luckily, this case has only exposed the hypocrisy of the fairness crowd. If they want to protect the rights of blacks, Muslims, gays, &c., they have also got to afford the same respect to everyone else. ------------------------------- II. The Failure of our Free Press Lyle Kossis "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of...the press." And thus begins the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. When one analyzes the language of the First Amendment and the peculiarity of its commands, one is lead to ask why the amendment used the declaratory and complete negative "no law" as opposed to a partial negative, such as one that read "no law except those deemed necessary for the public good" or "no law except those with regards to libel and slander." There is no asterisk or footnote in the constitution that is written after the First Amendment, claiming that "no law" allowed for traditional or historically acceptable exceptions to the rule. To be noted, the First Amendment does this because the founding fathers recognized and understood the importance of a free and unfettered press. A free press, during the time of the American Revolution, was said to be one of the bulwarks of freedom and one of the great pillars of the Temple of Liberty. With the increasing complexity of the issues facing our country today, ranging from science, economics, politics, medicine, finance, and foreign policy, we have come to rely more and more on the media to help bring to light the many subjects of the day in a simple and unbiased light. With the enormous size of the government today and the almost infinite departments, sectors, agencies, and associations, we the people can not monitor government on our own accord. And yet in these times of the most pressing circumstance, our media has done just the opposite; they have consistently served as an institution that spreads the agenda of the ruling elites, limits the debate on important topics, squashes dissent, and keeps the citizens of this nation uninformed, lazy, apathetic and politically dormant. The failure of the mass media we have today could not be more present than in the coverage of the presidential races currently going on in the two major parties. Men like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel have been preaching a different message this campaign season, somewhat populist in nature, and appealing because it is something new and different that American voters haven't heard in a long time. These men talk about a respect for the individual, a distrust of large and expansive corporations, and overall, a more responsive and democratic government. And yet the mass media has continued to almost completely ignore them during presidential debates and then discredits an online poll that has Paul, Kucinich or Gravel winning as being influenced by an endless army of "spammers." This was evident when only a couple days ago, after Dennis Kucinich had won an online ABC poll by over 3,000 votes, ABC took the poll down and put a new one up, this time without Kucinich's picture. Fox news is also guilty of biased reporting when they deliberately misconstrued Ron Paul's statement on Blowback during the South Carolina debate to say that Ron Paul claimed "America caused 9/11," or when every major news network failed to cover the West Alabama Republican Party Straw Poll or the New Hampshire Taxpayer's Union straw poll, both of which Ron Paul won by almost 90%. The mass media also doesn't seem to cover new discoveries in science or recent crises going on in the Mid-East. Most people are unaware that a team of Russian scientists successfully tested an HIV vaccine that was shown, in trials, to not only prevent the acquisition of HIV, but work as a therapeutic device as well. The media also conveniently forgot to mention that we have women soldiers in Iraq dying because of dehydration (what's scarier is that it's because the women refuse to drink water in the afternoon because they would have to go to the bathroom later, and would be likely to get raped along the way in the dark by male soldiers.) I guess Paris Hilton's posterior or Mrs. Lohan's recent drug addiction merits more attention than stupid, unimportant events like those mentioned above. In the time we live in, where the price of information is getting higher and fewer and fewer people are controlling what goes on the TV, we must remember the sanctity of the free press. A press not governed by corporate control, media elites, lobbyists, or behind the scene political actors is truly a free press. A press that is obsessed with 30 second sound bites, flashing light bulbs, pearly whites, pre-packaged ideas, and manufacturing consent, is merely an aid to tyranny. I think it would do us all much good to remember what Thomas Jefferson said almost 200 years ago: "The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." ------------------------------- III. Fighting Force with Force Matt Mitchel "...the Legislature finds that it is proper for law-abiding people to protect themselves...and others from intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others...[and] no person or victim of crime should be required to surrender his or her personal safety to a criminal, nor should a person or victim be required to needlessly retreat in the face of intrusion or attack..." --Florida Senate Bill No. 436, Enacted October 1, 2005 Before April 16, 2007, the debate surrounding the 2nd Amendment and the right to use firearms in self-defense had taken a more academic tone. Eight years after the Columbine shooting and nearly three years after the sunset of the Brady Bill banning certain classes of assault weapons, the debate over gun rights became marginalized by the curious devolution of Iraq, the health care crisis, and natural disasters. But the tragedy at Virginia Tech has reawakened the debate, and made the issue of gun control more than just a problem for classroom discussion. Rather, the Blacksburg murders must rekindle a real national conversation on how much value we place on our natural rights as Americans and how these values affect how we best protect our nation's children. A fighting chance: The importance of the Castle Doctrine "And the law...has so particular and tender a regard to the immunity of a man's house, that it stiles it his castle, and will never suffer it to be violated with immunity: agreeing herein with the sentiments of ancient Rome... For this reason no doors can in general be broken open to execute any civil process; though, in criminal causes, the public safety supersedes the private." --William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, Chapter 16 There is a real case to be made with respect to arguing that the 2nd Amendment is in some respects outdated. At the time of America's founding, America was still a largely rural nation with state governments operating militias independently of the professional military force under the command of the President of the United States. However, by the end of the 19th century, the combination of conscription, Napoleonic command structure reforms, and the federalization of state military forces had made America's armed forces a professionalized citizen's army or "well-trained militia" as referred to in the text of the 2nd Amendment. In this respect, certain justifications for the right to bear arms, such as the right to revolt against the state should the government fail to protect our rights as citizens, are arcane and (unfortunately) not relevant in 21st century America. But this does not absolve supporters of "gun-free campus" codes from explaining one of the underlying philosophical and legal justifications for the right of law-abiding persons to keep and bear arms. The Castle Doctrine, a common-law concept based in British jurisprudence, states that a person's property are his to defend from intrusion or attack. According to the Castle Doctrine, as the rightful owner of a threatened property, a citizen has the right to use deadly force in defense of that property against an unlawful intruder or any person committing a criminal act on that property in defense of self or others. This doctrine is one of the core justifications for so-called "stand your ground laws" such as that which exist in Florida. In the Sunshine State, the Castle Doctrine's legal provisions have been extended by Florida Senate Bill 436, signed by former Governor Jeb Bush and enacted in 2005. Florida Statutes Section 776.013(3), created by this act, states the following: A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a legal right to be has...the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself of herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony. Note: Emphasis added. The act also creates Florida Statutes Section 776.032, which provides that any act of self-defense permitted under the bill is "immune from criminal prosecution", unless the victim of deadly force is a law enforcement officer. To be perfectly direct, any public entity that prevents any resident of the State of Florida to possess and carry a firearm for the purpose of protecting self or others stands in clear violation of state law and Article I, Section 8 of the Florida Constitution. The University of Florida, an entity funded by the taxpayers of this state and the Florida Legislature, is required to not only observe and obey the laws of the State of Florida, but also honor and preserve the rights and safety of its students. So long as the University maintains its current prohibition on possessing and carrying firearms on campus, it is engaging in illegal and possibly criminal behavior at taxpayers' expense. A reality check about self-defense "A gunned-down bleeding guy creates news. A man who spared his family by brandishing a handgun, well, that's just water-cooler chat." --Larry Elder, "How often do Americans use guns for defensive purposes?" (2005) In an age where people would rather live by feeling rather than thinking, supporters of gun control are at a supreme advantage when taking their cause to the public. While supporters of the Second Amendment are left with mere legal dogma, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Million Mom March cite horror stories like workplace shootings and accidental gun deaths to raise support for duty to retreat laws and other restrictions on justifiable acts of self-defense. Blood and tears make for good television ratings and do a fine job of filling up airtime on cable news, but rarely do they help make good public policy. Where does the sophistry on self-defense shootings end, and where can the reality be found? In 2003, there were 12,548 recorded deaths caused by acts of non-suicidal gun violence. Criminologist Gary Kleck has concluded that about 2.5 million Americans use guns in self-defense every year. The Department of Justice independently confirmed this finding, and has said that taking into account multiple uses of guns in self-defense per person, firearms may be used in self-defense by Americans up to 4.7 million times per year. Suppose that out of Kleck's estimate, ten percent of those uses actually saved a person's life. That means 25,000 Americans were saved from death by citizens using firearms, nearly double the number of non-suicide gun-related deaths recorded in 2003. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of cases of justifiable self-defense with firearms are non-lethal. Estimates place over 90% of all uses of firearms in self-defense as non-lethal; less than ten percent of all cases involve a citizen firing his weapon at an attacker. Even with such disproportionate figures, citizens shoot and kill more criminals per year than law enforcement officer by wide margins. In fact, police officers are almost six times more likely than a civilian to shoot mistakenly someone in self-defense who was not a criminal. And finally, just to put a last nail in the coffin of the "gun owners are cowboys" argument: In Florida, a person is two times more likely to be killed by an alligator than by a person with a concealed carry permit. Conclusion "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." -- Mahatma Gandhi Hindsight does nobody any good on issues like this. It is easy for people on both sides of this contentious topic to look at tragedies like Virginia Tech and think "if only students could carry guns, this wouldn't have happened". And on the other side, it's equally simple to imagine "if only Virginia police found out about Seung-Hui Cho's mental illness, he would never have bought a gun in the first place". I cannot and will not delve into such hypothetical questions. It does no service to the memories of those who died that awful day, and equally importantly, to our collective need to prevent such an event from happening here on our own campus. But in closing, simply consider this final thought. If a similar incident were to occur right here at UF, if someone sought to attack you and kill you, and you had the right to defend yourself against your attacker, would you use that right? If a passerby happened to be carrying a gun and he saved your life, would you begrudge his breaking the rules in order to preserve the safety of a stranger? Of course, it would be much better if a repeat of Virginia Tech never happened again anywhere, much less at UF. But if the unthinkable were to happen, would you feel safer knowing that the shooter could freely kill innocent people with ease, without a fight? Or if students could protect themselves, would the shooter feel quite as safe and powerful? Would a potential killer even want to attempt murder if he knew such an act could be the last mistake he may ever make? Florida's "stand your ground" law was enacted because we do have the right to protect ourselves when rules and those who enforce them fail. The men and women in Tigert Hall surely saw that rules and university police did not stop tragedy in Blacksburg. It's time they recognize that state laws allow their students to defend their lives and possessions if, God forbid, the university cannot. ------------------------------- IV. An Inside Look at the White House Matt Dean This summer I had the opportunity of a lifetime in that I was able to spend three months in Washington, DC as a White House intern. I had the unbelievable fortune to work at the White House behind the scenes and see first hand how the executive branch performs its day to day functions. Make no mistake, interns are the bottom of the White House totem pole, but we still get to take part in some fascinating events and have a small hand in the work that goes on in the administration. There is no way to sum up a summer at the White House in one article, but I left my experience with a fresh perspective of this administration that differed greatly from the misconceptions I had at the beginning of my internship. The most surprising facet of life at the White House was the attitude and mindset of the staff. I entered my experience knowing that the staffers poured their hearts into their jobs and toiled away at outlandish hours in order to make sure their work was done right. Knowing this, I expected many of these devoted employees would feel beaten down and exasperated at the hands of the bleak media coverage and poor poll numbers that have come with the war in Iraq. I most certainly did not expect the upbeat outlook that I saw when I got there. Everyone was extremely pleasant; many remarked that this was the most encouraging environment in which they had ever worked. The staff, both senior and entry level, had a great sense of humor—Karl Rove compared his public perception as something akin to Grendel in Beowulf; the President jokingly chided himself for being unable to speak English properly. My office was full of bright and optimistic staff who loved the work they were doing for this President. It didn’t take long to understand the unifying factor behind this attitude that permeated the White House walls. It was nothing more than a collective vision. The staff members were able to see their jobs in a larger context, and absolutely refused to get caught in the trap of short-term politics and nearsighted thinking that seems to swallow so many in Washington. The White House staff is upbeat because they believe in what they’re doing and, much like the President, are firm in their convictions. We all know the utter and shameless disdain liberals have for this President, but many conservatives have joined in the choir of criticism towards Bush in his second term. Some have been frustrated by his recent stances and policies, namely on immigration and the management of the war. Some believe that he has not performed up to the expectations he set out in his reelection campaign and has had a disappointing second term. I don’t always agree with the President, but I must say that it is refreshing to see someone in Washington who stands by his convictions and fights for what he believes in, regardless of what either political party might have to say about it. Republicans can gripe, but the reason they loved Bush is the same reason that some now are starting to turn on him: he is a man set in his convictions and unwavering in the face of having to make unpopular decisions. President Bush often references the fact that books are still being released that chronicle the life and presidency of George Washington. He stresses that since historians have yet to fully measure the impact of our first President, he has little to worry about in the way of opinion polls and op-ed pieces. It was truly inspiring to see that this President has the vision and conviction that so many politicians—our so-called “leaders”—and citizens in this country lack. It is truly comical to see how liberals point to polls as a reason to why we should begin getting our troops out of Iraq. A recent study showed that only 3% of women and 14% of American men claimed to be well versed in global politics. Somehow it escapes mention that more than 85% of the people who are polled about the war have no idea what they’re talking about. I guess that fact just doesn’t fit very nicely in the talking points. It’s regrettable, but the simplistic opinion of a large number of Americans can be summed up as war=bad, peace=good. Unfortunately life isn’t always quite that simple. I long for a world where warfare is unnecessary, but we don’t live in that world and we never will. There is no such thing as peace in a world where evil exists as it is always plotting ways to attack and kill the good. The truth is that war is unpopular, but we knew what we were getting involved in when we decided to finally fight back in this war against islamo-facism. The President has said since the initial phases of the war in Afghanistan that our war with terror was sure to be a long and costly struggle, but apparently the left didn’t really think he was serious. Now they continue to call for our retreat from Iraq, all the while refusing to offer any serious plan to fight the fundamentalists who have been attacking America for decades. I guess the belief is that if we run away from Iraq, the problem of Islamic terrorists will disappear and the world will have a newfound respect for American foreign policy. It is just this type of simplistic, illogical and reactionary thinking that so many politicians rely on to make their decisions. They want the short-term fix that will resonate with voters and refuse to look beyond the 2 or 6 year voting cycle. It’s this thought process that has the left rooting for our defeat in Iraq. If we lose in Iraq, Bush takes the blame and Democrats will—in their estimation—reap the glory and sweep into power. It was heartening to see the President continue to stand his ground throughout the summer, even as Republican support on various issues began to chip away. I wasn’t encouraged because I always agreed with what he had to say or the policies he was promoting, but because our President had the courage to stand up for his ideas and beliefs. I will not always agree with every decision made by the Bush administration, but it gives me great comfort to know that we have a President who will always defend his core convictions, even if it involves making hard decisions and going against the most recent popularity poll. I left my White House experience with a new appreciation of the job that President Bush is doing and proud to have been given the chance to serve, in however small a capacity, under his administration. ------------------------------- V. An Inconvenient Conjecture Bryan Griffin I was on my way to class, at about 1 in the afternoon in February at the University of Florida and it was cold. I mean, freezing. I had bundled up, but apparently not enough, because halfway to class I began to quicken my pace to end the misery. Just that morning, I had heard about the record snowfall in New York recently, something to the tune of 140 inches of snow over the weekend. Nightly, freeze warnings would roll across my television screen reminding residents of Gainesville to protect plants and crops from possible damages. And then I stop. I look around, and I begin to notice that the "independent" campus newspaper had an irregularly large headline that day. My fellow students were standing around me, in hats, scarves, mittens, jackets and sweaters, and the way they were brandishing the newspapers almost made it seem they were holding signs: the opened newspapers clutched in both fists at about chest height and held outright to read. The headline, surprise surprise, spreading the propaganda and lies of the political left and their ploy to use the environment to get a vote. The hype extended by the liberal media and political figureheads of today like Al Gore about Global Warming is a cockeyed exaggeration and a political ploy to gain votes in 2008. Senate committees and international organizations can draw whatever conjectures they want; the "epidemic" and earth-ending panic has got to stop. The media must stop using conjecture as fact. As it turned out when I read the article, the "confirmation" of global warming, presented as a fact in big bold letters deserving front page attention, was merely the conclusion of one professor who had reviewed a collection of "experts" who had reviewed a collection of scientific documents that had warned of a possible 3.5 to 8 degree temperature change in the next 100 years. And what was included of the predictive scientific report, used the words "could", "possibly" and "may" so many times the idea of a "confirmed" epidemic began to seem like a "confirmed" win for Al Gore in 2000. My girlfriend in Tampa was required to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" in her environmental studies class. She told me as the movie played, the teacher had to constantly stop the DVD and correct the scientific mistakes the ex-vice president’s film made, and that this was no rare occasion. She says the various shots used as concrete "evidence" were so selective and generalized that it hardly constituted anything of a factual documentary. Does a montage of random dying animals that happen to live on the polar ice caps and hazily presented sequences of icebergs melting confirm an epidemic? Can we make a documentary on the world being run by rodents if we compile an entire movie of the furry creatures in specifically chosen settings doing specifically captured things? I also find it very difficult to trust temperature readings from any type of human-made device that is over a hundred years old, especially one that could record "global atmospheric temperatures" while the light bulb was still in the works. A hot summer and a melted glacier does not mean that this is a world-wide trend. The Earth constantly changes, species constantly adapt to new environments, and continents, as we may remember, move. Oh yea, and our planet circles a gigantic ball of fire with a core temperature of around twenty-four million and a half degrees Fahrenheit. Among the variety of changes our world continually encounters, there is not to be forgotten, but also not to be reviewed by the media, a sun constantly prone to sunspots and differential surface heating. A sun, a burning star, Earth’s only source of heat that hangs in a delicate balance within our solar system with no guarantee of eternal continuity. Why don’t we look at the epidemic scientifically. We need a control, a planet with no human interaction to prove that we are or aren’t causing ours to heat. Mars. Mars has a much higher atmospheric carbon dioxide percentage than earth. This has existed for millions of years because mars has had no photosynthetic vegetation to convert any of it to oxygen And yet, Mars is in an ice age. Scientifically, this would disprove the greenhouse effect alone. But looking even further provides another shocking development. Mars is currently warming, as reported by NASA, due to recent solar activity. Mars can be affected by solar fluctuations but our Earth is immune? I will trust NASA’s assessment of planet-wide temperature fluctuations over the past few years gathered with recent technology. I will not get hysterical over "scientific" theories about the earth’s changing temperature using century-old technology and compiled conjecture. Here’s another modern study I found more confirmable. A scientific report in California found a cow in a pasture to produce, on average, 600 liters of methane alone in a days time, via natural digestion. When the millions of cows in California alone are taken into consideration, and then combined with the exponentially larger amount worldwide, the all-natural animals are contributing more global greenhouses gases than we are! The Kyoto Treaty has recognized methane as a serious problem contributing to global warming. Should we start at the heart of the problem to save our planet from certain doom? Is everyone hungry for a burger? Maybe we could start at the real heart of the problem and stuff a sock in the hot-air spewing liberals and leftist "independent" media sources that want to perpetuate this preposterous predicament. To be clearly understood, I am entirely in favor of decreasing pollution on earth, conserving materials, and reusing what we consume. However, the fact and hype that are purported by the current liberal agenda must be seen for what it is, and what it can become. It is a political ploy that will be carried to any length to get a vote, or as democrats love to cling to, "a change". Worse, it is a political maneuver that will inhibit our liberties in the future. The way the liberal agenda is headed, the government will be controlling so many of our rights as creatures of this earth to use it, that we will have to ask for permission to take a car trip, or fly an airplane, or do anything that may perpetuate ‘global warming‘. I am deathly afraid of the world my children will live in when a permit is necessary to drive to the store, purchase a chemical, or move themselves in any way through our free country. It sounds like the only epidemic at hand is a reversion to a leftist government with communist-like solutions to control a "confirmed" global warming. -------------------------------