Perhaps the feds should prosecute her for steroid use

This stinks to high holy hell:

Chambersburg, Pa.— A 10-year-old central Pennsylvania girl who allegedly caused a baby's death by violently shaking him and throwing him into a crib was charged with third-degree murder.

The charges filed against the fifth-grader on Friday in Franklin County came after a coroner's inquest into the death of 11-month-old Heath Ryder. The girl was released into the custody of her parents and ordered not to have unsupervised contact with children under 5.

The average 11-month-old boy weighs about 20 pounds.  In comparison, the average bowling ball used by an adult male weighs 15 pounds. 

It’s been a few years since I worked at a summer camp, but I don’t know too many 10-year-old girls with the upper body strength to accomplish this feat.

I only know what I read in the article.  But this really doesn’t sit right.

“Science does not trump the testimony of individuals.”

Fortunately, that statement did not come from any of my doctors.  If it did, I would be dead right now. 

Unfortunately, that statement comes from somebody who has a similar amount of control over the lives of others: A prosecutor. 

Wayne County Prosecutor Marilyn Eisenbraun made that statement in court documents defending the incarceration of Karl Vinson, a man who has spent 25 years in prison for…well, not really much of anything, it turns out.  Darrell Dawsey from MLive:

As the story details, Vinson was convicted in 1986 for raping a 9-year-old girl, although he and his parents said he was at home at the time the crime occurred. Despite their testimony, a technician at the Detroit Crime Lab claimed that, because because his blood antigens don't show up in bodily fluid, Vinson couldn't be ruled out as a suspect. He was sentenced to 10 to 50 years.

When DNA testing emerged, Vinson pushed in 1991 to have the child's sheets analyzed for semen stains. Fifteen years later, he found out the sheets were destroyed.

But a test in 2009 proved that, contrary to earlier beliefs, Vinson's blood antigens do indeed show up in bodily fluids. Given that, the sheets would've contained clear evidence of his presence had he raped the child.

They didn't, and it's highly likely he didn't. And so the Innocence Clinic is challenging the prosecutor's office...yet again. Two years ago, Sandra Svoboda at the Metro Times blew the lid off of the tragic case of Dwayne Provience, a Detroit man the Clinic had proven was wrongly serving 32 to 62 years in prison for murder. Provience was eventually freed. Before that, the Clinic helped exonerate two Detroit men wrongly convicted in 2001 of a shooting.

In each of those cases prosecutors were reluctant to consider new trials or tossing out the convictions.

More details from the Free Press:

"The scientific evidence conclusively proves that this man is innocent," clinic codirector David Moran said of Vinson, a former Detroiter who has spent 25 years in prison.

Moran said Vinson, 56, is the victim of a flawed forensic test and that more recent tests rule him out as a suspect.

But the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opposes the request because the girl identified Vinson as her attacker.

"Science does not trump the testimony of individuals," Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Marilyn Eisenbraun said in court documents. She wouldn't discuss the case.

Police said an intruder raped the girl in the early hours of Jan. 3, 1986, after climbing through her bedroom window. When he left, the girl woke up her mother, who called police.

The girl, who required surgery, initially was unable to tell her mother who raped her, records show. But when her mother suggested Vinson, the girl said he did it.

I don’t mean to hate on all prosecutors.  I know some; they’re generally good people.  And I understand that they are inundated with appeals and efforts to overturn convictions.  It’s a tough job with a heavy workload, especially in Wayne County.  I don’t expect prosecutors to roll over every time some group comes to them with evidence that somebody might be wrongly imprisoned.  I get that.

My big issue is with the last sentence in the first excerpt above: Prosecutors are often reluctant to even consider that somebody might have been falsely convicted.  And that’s wrong.  You can assemble all the exculpatory evidence in the world and come to prosecutors with a gift-wrapped case of innocence, and you’ll get the legal equivalent of the middle finger.  This would be fine if the goal of being a prosecutor was to imprison as many people as humanly possible.  It is not fine since the goal of a prosecutor should be to obtain some modicum of justice. 

And that leads to absurd statements like, “Science does not trump the testimony of individuals.”  Sure, that statement was probably cherry picked from a pleading.  But the fact that an educated and trained lawyer who quite literally can mess with lives at will wrote those words should send chills down your spine.  There are six million reasons why science should trump the testimony of individuals, but that statement is so inherently absurd I don’t even think I need to list them.

This…should probably bother you.  No matter what side of the aisle you’re on.  When an innocent man goes to prison, the guilty party remains free.  When an innocent man goes to prison, your tax dollars are used to support him.  And when a prosecutor writes, “Science does not trump the testimony of individuals,” she does so on behalf of the people.

Just something to think about next time you see a candidate for office talk about how he is “tough on crime.”

List of Demands

Last week, responding to this almost-comical-if-it-weren’t-so-sad situation surrounding a Whole Foods in Boston, Radley Balko came up with a list of ways to create a protest-proof grocery store.  Some highlights:

All of which got me wondering. What would it take to run a grocery store that’s immune to progressive protest? I came up with this checklist:

• You must pay your employees a high wage and provide them with excellent health insurance. However, you may pay them crappy wages and offer fewer benefits so long as you let them unionize. Bonus points if they’re required to divert a portion of those crappy wages to union dues.
• You must insist that your suppliers adhere to strict standards about the treatment of animals and the environment. You should buy local. You shouldn’t sell anything that can only be shipped by jet or tractor trailer. We don’t want our enjoyment of our shade-grown, fair-trade, organic morning roast with hints of chocolate, currant, and elderberry ruined by a giant-carbon-footprint finish. But remember, you still need to cater to a wide variety of diets. And have good selection. And not charge too much.
• You should be a good corporate citizen, and donate regularly to charity and political causes. But only those causes that disapprove of commercialism. A good rule of thumb: If the cause you’re considering doesn’t think you, a business, should be legally permitted to exist, it’s probably a safe donation.
• Just a reminder: You must do all of these things while keeping your prices low. But not so low that you might cause a rival locally-owned store to go out of business.
• Oh, you also must be locally-owned.
• You can’t advertise; all advertising is exploitation. It would be preferable if you didn’t have a logo. Actually, it would be preferable if you didn’t even have a sign. (Note: This will also give you a cool, underground vibe.)
• No trans-fats. No plastics. No high-fructose corn syrup. Don’t even think of selling tobacco, unless it’s that apple-flavored stuff we need for our Hookahs. You may sell alcohol, but only organic wine and micro-brewed beer. Nothing from Big Alcohol. Except PBR, of course. (But remember, keep those prices low!)
• You must foster a work environment that promotes tolerance and open-mindedness. This means no white trash.
• Even if you meet all of these conditions, no management for your store may at no time publicly express a political opinion that runs contrary to progressive values. This is betrayal, and the boycotts will commence.

Turns out Balko wasn’t that far off.  From the Washington Business Journal, here is a list of demands community groups have given to Walmart, which is planning to open four stores in the District:

Among the demands, the group wants Walmart to:

• Pay every employee the D.C. living wage, currently $12.50 per hour.
• Provide $50 a month in public transportation subsidy to every employee.
• Employ at least 65 percent of its D.C. employees on a full-time basis.
• Not ask job applicants about previous criminal convictions.
• Use project labor agreements to construct its stores.
• Fund all infrastructure improvements made necessary by its stores.
• Provide free shuttle transportation to and from the nearest Metro station to each D.C. store every 10 minutes.
• Commit to traffic alleviation studies.
• Provide up to 2.5 free or low-priced parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of building space.
• Provide secure, accessible bicycle parking, car sharing and bike sharing for workers and shoppers.
• Not sell firearms or ammunition.
• Employ no less than two off-duty D.C. police officers on its premises at all times.
• Abide by a "code of conduct with regard to its employees' freedom to choose a voice on the job without interference."
• Fund workforce training programs for D.C. residents, and use training programs as its primary avenue for hiring D.C. residents.
• Hire at least 40 percent of its employees at each store from the ward in which the store is located.
• Make "ongoing contributions to a fund managed by a council of community stakeholders" that will provide incentives and support to local small businesses.
• Make ongoing payments for community funds controlled by "community advisory councils" for education and faith-based programs.

The WBJ adds:

Walmart, which plans to open four D.C. stores by 2013, is generally loathe to sign community benefit agreements, and there's very little D.C. activists can do, besides protest, to force the retailer into one.

Which…isn’t true.  There’s one significant thing every citizen can do to force the retailer to do things: don’t shop there.  If these activists are really speaking for the community at large, then Walmart won’t have any customers until it agrees to the demands of the community.  If they’re in such good position now that they can force all these demands on a single company (who isn’t asking for favors or handouts from the DC government, unlike pretty much every other corporation that comes to DC), then it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow through on that threat.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Like the Boston Whole Foods story mentioned above, there seems to be a disconnect between the “community activists” and the community:

“From my perspective, they have really rolled up their sleeves and shown us that they are interested in community concerns,” said Second Baptist Church pastor James Terrell, citing the money for local education needs as well as amenities that the new Walmart would bring.

Paul McElligott, executive director of the Perry School Community Services Center, spoke of the dire need for employment—his organization has in previous years placed around 25 people in jobs per month, but only averaged seven in 2010. “All things considered, this project is a benefit,” he said.

Yvonne Williams, chair of the Board of Trustees for Bible Way Church—which has built hundreds of low-income apartments right across the street from the proposed Walmart, and is at work on 60 more—brought 50 signatures in favor of the project from local residents, and says they desperately need more affordable groceries than what they can get in CityVista Safeway and NoMa Harris Teeter (Bible Way had tried to run a supermarket itself years ago, and failed. Now, according to St. Aloysius' Father Thomas Clifford, a local non-profit runs buses for seniors to a Walmart out in Maryland.)

“We’ve been praying for food in our neighborhood for 40 years,” Williams said. “We need Walmart here to meet the needs of our residents.”

Looks like our Food Desert Czar doesn’t have to look far for answers.

Wait a week

Last week, a commenter asked:

What is your prognosis, and I mean your prognosis not the doc's?

And I found that simple question interesting enough to bump up here.  I wrote this post last week, but I didn’t like the way it came out.  So I decided to sit on it and see if I still felt the same way.  I don’t.  But here’s part of what I wrote last week: 

I guess we can start with the docs prognosis.  I have many of them.  They’re all in different places but by now, after the intrathetcal chemo treatments, we’re somewhere in the range of “good.”  And when I say “good,” I mean my doctors’ assessment of the probability that I am “cured,” i.e., disease free from here on out.  Dr. Anderson was always the most optimistic at this point.  When we first met him, Dr. Al-Katib looked at my mother and said “this is curable.”  Dr. Li pegged my chances around 80% before I did the additional chemo.  Dr. Jaffee, in a journal article on my “special” type of lymphoma, wrote that my type is “marked by good prognosis.”  Dr. Ambinder was probably the least optimistic out of the above group, but after reviewing my case further, he seems considerably more upbeat.  Dr. Zelenetz, although I haven’t spoken to him directly or recently, was comfortable enough letting things go without further treatment.  And Dr. Advani was comfortable with just the IT treatments. 

So there, I guess.  If you throw in the Henry Ford tumor board, and any other docs at U-M or Hopkins that reviewed my case through Dr. Li and Dr. Ambinder, you’re looking at about 20 oncologists who believe that my prognosis is good.  You can’t ask for much more than that when you’re playing with cancer. 

On top of that, you have my favorable characteristics: young, healthy, good shape, low risk factors, early stage, aggressive tumor with high proliferation rate (which is bad news in terms of finding a tumor – it can progress quicker before you find it - but good news in terms of killing it) and so on.  All in all, I have every reason to feel confident about my future.

And I don’t.  Not one bit.  I’m just sitting here waiting for the next disaster. 

And here’s the reason:  The last six months – pretty much since I went up to U-M on April 12 – and particularly the last month, have messed me up good.  I wrote a lot about getting cancer at 25 and how you cope with things and for the most part, I have done just that.  But my story, in its totality, is almost becoming absurd to the point where I don’t think it’s just some bad luck, I almost think there’s some guiding force hell-bent on my personal destruction.  I get cancer…whatever.  It happens to a not-inconsequential number of young people.  It’s a really rare type, fine.  I guess that happens too.  But then I don’t realize it until two months after I start chemo, and we start a four month dance over how the hell to treat it.  And then we finally decide, and then I end up in hell where I can’t walk or eat for three weeks.  Oh…and my doctor abruptly quit practicing medicine after 30 years, leaving me without the only doctor that had been with me since day 1. 

As I said back in February, “But if you’ve been a reader around here for long enough, you know the rule of Nick when it comes to cancer treatment:  Every bit of good news must be met with an equal and opposite bit of bad news.  The cool (horrible?) thing has been that each new bit of bad news is more interesting/outrageous than the last.”

A couple weeks later, a single needle left me incapacitated. 

The rest of the post was as depressing as those last paragraphs.  I no longer feel that way. 

The point is that over the past few months, my mood has increasingly been driven by my physical condition.  There were various points during my dark days of horizontal hell when I seriously wondered if things would ever get better.  And when you’re coming off of cancer and then the worse-than-cancer treatment to prevent cancer, every little ache, pain, bruise, bump, and odd feeling just sorta freaks you out.  And if you don’t feel right, you immediately think something’s wrong.

I’ve been better recently.  I’m getting there, albeit slowly.  So while my answer to the above question last week would have been…that, this week, I’m feeling better and a little more rational.  So I’ll go with this: I’m cautiously optimistic.  I’ll never let myself get complacent, and I mean it when I said that I will be living under the gun for a few years.  But at the very least, I now have hope.  That sounds corny, but it’s a pretty terrible thing when you lose all hope that tomorrow – or at least some fixed point in the future – would be better.  During chemo, I had a plan and a defined schedule.  I could focus on one point and push on through.  During my dead days, I had nothing.  No plan, no idea how I would feel in 24 hours or one week, and only a wish that things would get better someday.  I’m glad those days appear to be over. 

I worry, sure.  But it’s about stuff I can’t control, so I just put that stuff somewhere else.  I would really like this stuff to be over.  There are many reasons to believe it is.  But I’ll never let my guard down.  You only get burned so many times before you learn to respect the fire. 

For now, though, I just keep moving forward. 

Wayne County Prosecutors, Dearborn Police unite all faiths with stunning asshatery

The place where I spent a good chunk of my cancer-fightin’ time – Dearborn, Michigan – is currently making national headlines, as Florida “pastor” Terry Jones (of Quran-burning fame) decided he was going to protest Sharia Law or violent Muslims or something in front of a Mosque in Dearborn.  I think most of us would agree that the best way to deal with this fellow would be to ignore him or hold a peaceful, much larger counterprotest.  Wayne County Prosecutors, however, decided that the best way to deal with this situation would be to dust off a 150 year old law, argue that Muslims are incapable of handling dissent without violence, and turn this idiot into a First Amendment martyr.

I only know what I’ve read from the (extensive) media coverage, but I cannot imagine any possible way that prosecutors could have handled this worse.  Dear Lord, what a disaster.  Some thoughts:

1)  The obvious result of this is that it gave Terry Jones far more publicity than he ever should have received.  Who knows how many people his protest would have drawn.  All I know is that it shouldn’t have led to a week of this:

  2) Of course, along with giving him far more ink than he deserves, prosecutors turned this guy into a First Amendment martyr.  Now millions of people are dropping those “I really hate this guy, but…” lines.  You had Imams defending a Quran-burning idiot.  This is like Michigan fans saying, “You know, I think they’re being a little too mean to Jim Tressel.”   Congratulations, Wayne County Prosecutors.  You have united the populace.

3)  Maybe it’s just me, but I think this whole thing was really insulting to the Muslim community.  Again, I only know what I read from the articles, but it seems the Muslim community in Dearborn was essentially saying, “Let him come.  We’ll have a peaceful counterprotest.”  I read article after article where local citizens were basically saying, “meh.” A bunch of local religious leaders (of all stripes) came together to organize a peaceful rally somewhere else in the city (since Jones wanted to protest at a Mosque).  This, to me, was the perfect way to handle this guy: “You want to come here and call us violent extremists who practice Sharia law, and we’re going to let you come here and say that and peacefully protest elsewhere.  And you’re the one carrying a gun.”  Could anything else have been more of a slap-in-the-face to Jones’s message?

4)  Instead, prosecutors and cops pulled this stunt, and everybody in America who is hearing about this story through one little blurb in a newspaper or a short snippet on a nightly newscast can conclude, “oh look, a bunch of Muslims are threatening to kill this guy because they don’t like what he has to say.  See!  They hate America!”  Prosecutors said things like this:

Prosecutor says "the citizens of this society (Dearborn)" believe that Quran-burning is worse than 1,000 deaths, citiing Imam Qazwini.

And made a huge deal of specifying that the case wasn’t about Terry Jones’s message or the his potential to incite violence, but about protecting Terry Jones from those violent Muslims:

The Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, said fears that Mr. Jones could incite violent counterprotests led them to court.

While people who didn’t work for the government were saying things like this:

"We think what the prosecutor did by ordering him or requesting that he pay a $100,000 bond, we think that's the worst possible thing she could've possibly done for our community. This is America. In America, we're entitled to free speech," said attorney Majed Moughni.

He is supporting Pastor Jones' right to free speech, even if he doesn't like what he has to say. The Dearborn attorney wanted to hold a "Stop the Hate" rally near Jones' protest, but his permit was denied. The event is being moved to the Civic Center, a move he supports after learning Pastor Jones' plans on bringing his gun.

"We're telling our people to stay away from him. He's a violent man. He's a crazy man, and we want to stay away from crazy people," Moughni said.

And this, from the same Imam Qazwini prosecutors cited in their arguments against Jones:

The imam said Wednesday that Mr. Jones has the right to speak out "even if he is misinformed," but he urges Muslims and others to steer clear of the protest.

The Rev. Terry Jones is taking his message to the nation's largest mosque in Dearborn.

"We are asking people not to attend, not to confront. The man can say what he wants, do what he wants, but we are not interested in a confrontation," Imam Al-Qazwini said.

He said Mr. Jones "apparently is trying to provoke the Muslim community" by coming to Dearborn and "defying them in their own stronghold."

Instead, the imam said, he urges people of all faiths to attend gatherings at the Islamic Center of America at 4 p.m. Thursday and the Dearborn Civic Center at 4 p.m. Friday.

"The plan is to fight hatred with love, to show the world that there are two ways to communicate -- one is hatred and bigotry, which Pastor Jones has been following, and the other is by having dialogue and showing the world our unity and our commonalities, and this is what we are planning," Imam Al-Qazwini said.

(Note: The “worse than 1,000” deaths statement attributed to Al-Qazwini above seems to be a particularly disgusting move by prosecutors and law enforcement.  The statement was mentioned in court by the Dearborn Police Chief.  It appears that the guy who allegedly made the statement didn’t (or wouldn’t) even testify against Jones).

And held a counterprotest that looked like this (from the Free Press):

 

But I fear most Americans weren’t following this story close enough to know all this.  Instead, all they hear is that the government was so afraid those violent Muslims were going to blow something up that they burned the First Amendment to silence a Christian they didn’t like.  Which did more for Terry Jones’s hysterical argument (as some commentators correctly noted) that Dearborn is a place filled with violent Muslims who practice Sharia law than Jones ever could.  Jeff Wattrick from MLive gets it:

Now, the cynics who get paid exploiting the “creeping Sharia” lie win. The American heartland’s ignorant obsession with “Mooslem” plots will only grow thanks to Worthy and O’Reilly’s efforts to thwart Jones.

Hate is a pretty weak weapon when it’s not aided by the government.

5)  This entire thing was ostensibly to prevent conflict and make Jones pick up the tab for police overtime.  So of course, this happened:

Helicopters are still buzzing around above the Dearborn courthouse. Tight security around here. Livonia sent special response team to help.

And this:

Dearborn police led Pastor Terry Jones out of the courtroom. He's on his way to jail. Chaos as group of radicals yell at Jones supporter.

And this, captioned “A Wayne County Sheriff's Deputy breaks up a small fight between Pro Rev. Terry Jones demonstrators and Muslims outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Mich.”

And you can’t have a protest in Southeast Michigan without BAMN:

Actually, there was a disruption of the peace in the courthouse lobby after the case adjourned. A decidedly non-Muslim gaggle from the always shouty BAMN decided the day would not be complete without an unnecessarily loud protest. They were annoying, not violent, and court officers quickly flushed them out of the building and onto the public square.

And two other incidents that I read about Friday night, but that got excised during the Detroit News’s ongoing consolidation of stories on this issue:  First, you’ll be happy to know that a bunch of cops did get to roll up to Islamic Center in Dearborn in twenty police cars for, yes, a “show of force.”  Second, one article I read mentioned that “tempers flared” during the non-incident because a citizen was being interviewed in an area designated for “media only.”  Police roughed him up as he shouted, “This is a free country! I can be interviewed here if I want to!”

6)  As a lawyer [DISCLAIMER: NOT YET LICENSED TO PRACTICE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. I SHOULD BE CONSIDERED COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT AS AN ATTORNEY AND AS A HUMAN BEING UNTIL I GET THAT PIECE OF PAPER], I’ve been trying to figure out how this is legal.  Best I can tell, it’s not, and I’m sure the citizens of Dearborn and Wayne County are going to be thrilled when they cut this guy a check sometime in the future.  Former Macomb County Prosecutor had some good comments on the legal aspect of this fiasco:

Former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga agreed the procedure being used against Jones runs contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

"There appears to be no evidence, no allegation even that Rev. Jones has made a threat against a person or has made a threat against the property of another," Marlinga said. "The Dearborn Police and Wayne County prosecutor are mixing apples and oranges."

Marlinga said regardless of the outcome of today's trial, Jones will have grounds for legal action. The city is better off if it loses in court today, because they "won't have this mistake to be looking at," Marlinga said.

"Even if you think someone will say something that will inflame a crowd, you cannot use the court process in advance to rule on whether or not a person can speak," he said. "Constitutionally, you just can't do it. You can't say if you don't put up money for a bond we're not going to let you speak."

And the folks over at the Volokh Conspiracy think this is not in the realm of things the government can do under the Constitution.

I also want to mention this story:  During a small St. Patty’s day at our apartment in Ann Arbor last year, the cops showed up.  We had like 15 people there and it was the middle of the day.  And we were law students in our mid to late 20s.  We got after it, but this wasn’t exactly a raging frat(ernity) party. 

We were chatting with the cops – who were cordial, by the way – when one of the members of our party mentioned that we weren’t making that much noise, and even then, it was before 10pm (the time the Ann Arbor noise ordinance goes into effect), and even then, we were on private property.  The cop replied with something like, “That doesn’t really matter.  There’s still disturbing the peace, or disorderly conduct, or harassment” (the cops claimed they were called by a passer-by, which…huh?).  Knowing the insanely broad language used in many of these statues, I asked the cop, “So hypothetically, no matter what we were doing, you could probably find a way to write us a ticket?”  “Oh yeah,” the cop replied. 

The point is, if you go outside (or even if you don’t, for that matter) and do something that might possibly bother somebody, there’s always some conceivable way a cop or a prosecutor could get you for violating some law.  This Jones prosecution – having a trial and taking somebody to jail before anything even happened – should scare the hell out of you regardless of Jones’s message.  I mean, honestly, next time the Tea Partiers want to protest in DC, or union members want to protest in Lansing or Madison, all somebody has to do is e-mail a couple death threats to the local cops.  Boom – protest silenced. 

7)  One separate point on the legal aspect:  From what I read, the issue in the “trial” was NOT whether Terry Jones was going to break the law, and it couldn’t be a referendum on his message.  Rather, the key issue was whether Jones’s protest would provoked a violent reaction by others.  In attempting to prove this, prosecutors implicitly adopted Terry Jones’s arguments: that the citizens of Dearborn were apparently incapable of handling Jones’s protest without violence.  That’s why they elicited testimony about death threats and some Muslims viewing the burning of the Quran as “worse than 1,000 deaths.”  Of course, they did this all through the testimony of a single police officer.  As far as I can tell, prosecutors did not call a single Dearborn resident or clergyman of any faith.

8)  And of course, Jones is planning to do this all over again next week.

9)  I’m actually significantly more irritated by this after writing all that.  I really don’t know what else to say.  So I’ll leave you with this excerpt from Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Michigan:

As Jones is an ignoramus and a charlatan of a pastor, I still affirm that much of the hoopla could have been averted if Jones would have been allowed to protest in front of the Islamic Center of America.  Having been defended via an ACLU brief, he’s now fashioned himself as a 1st Amendment martyr.  Jones’ plan to come back to Dearborn to protest in front of the Islamic Center of America next week could have been averted.

I continue to say that Wayne County Prosecutor’s office raised Jones’ profile with the legal injunction against him.  Furthermore, the Prosecutor’s argument that a riot would have broken out in Dearborn ala the Afghanistan United Nation office tragedy was a diss to Metro Detroit Muslims.  The ACTS 17 group came to Dearborn without being harmed and the radical Westboro Baptist Church protested recently in front of the same mosque without incident.  The Imams Council of this area, which I am a part of, intentionally coordinated interfaith activities with Christians to divert the chance of confrontation.  The only persons who were extremely rowdy yet non-violent relating to Jones being in Dearborn were from BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), and they are not Muslims!

Also the argument that there could have been a dangerous situation and that he shouldn’t speak in front of the mosque because of a potential riot is bogus from another perspective.  If anyone speaks and is not planning violence against persons or structures, he/she should not be blocked simply because of the potential that someone may harm them.  His carrying a gun is a non-issue though the klutz accidently discharged his firearm Thursday night at the FOX 2 parking lot in a car.  The liability of potential violence is not upon the speaker if he is not telling people to be violent.  Any violent acts would be the criminality of the perpetrators of violence.  Most public figures, who take controversial stances including myself, have received death threats.   Should other speakers be barred because they may say something politically incorrect in front of particular locations to reinforce their points?  I don’t think so.

So though I despise the burning of the Torah, Psalms, Gospel and Qur’an and I believe that it is wrong to protest in front of houses of worship from a spiritual perspective, I also think that we can go down a dangerous path when we begin blocking persons from speaking on public property at any location.  It’s Jones today, and it could be you and me tomorrow.

I hope that this is the message the rest of the world hears.  Sadly, that won’t be the case.