siderea | Entries tagged with civics

Informal poll:

I was just watching an activist's video about media in the US in which she showed a clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren schooling a news anchor about the relationships of the Presidency, Congress, and the Courts to one another. At one point Warren refers to this as "ConLaw 101" – "ConLaw" being the slang term in colleges for Constitutional law classes and "101" being the idiomatic term for a introductory college class. The activist, in discussing what a shonda it is a CNBC news anchor doesn't seem to have the first idea of how our government is organized, says, disgusted, "this is literally 12th grade Government", i.e. this is what is covered in a 12th grade Government class.

Which tripped over something I've been gnawing on for thirty-five years.

The activist who said this is in Oregon.

I'm from Massachusetts, but was schooled in New Hampshire kindergarten through 9th grade (1976-1986). I then moved across the country to California for my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school (1986-1989).

In California, I was shocked to discover that civics wasn't apparently taught at all until 12th grade.

I had wondered if I just had an idiosyncratic school district, but I got the impression this was the California standard class progression.

And here we have a person about my age in Oregon (don't know where she was educated) exclaiming that knowing the very most basic rudiments of our federal government's organization is, c'mon, "12th grade" stuff, clearly implying she thinks it's normal for an American citizen to learn this in 12th grade, validating my impression that there are places west of the Rockies where this topic isn't broached until the last year of high school.

I just went and asked Mr Bostoniensis about his civics education. He was wholly educated in Massachusetts. He reports it was covered in his 7th or 8th grade history class, as a natural outgrowth of teaching the history of the American Revolution and the crafting of our then-new form of government. He said that later in high school he got a full-on political science class, but the basics were covered in junior high.

Like I said, I went to school in New Hampshire.

It was covered in second grade. I was, like, 7 or 8 years old.

This was not some sort of honors class or gifted enrichment. My entire second grade class – the kids who sat in the red chairs and everybody – was marched down the hall for what we were told was "social studies", but which had, much to my enormous disappointment and bitterness, no sociological content whatsoever, just boring stories about indistinguishable old dead white dudes with strange white hairstyles who were for some reason important.

Nobody expected 7 and 8-year-olds to retain this, of course. So it was repeated every year until we left elementary school. I remember rolling my eyes some time around 6th grade and wondering if we'd ever make it up to the Civil War. (No.)

Now, my perspective on this might be a little skewed because I was also getting federal civics at home. My mom was a legal secretary and a con law fangirl. I've theorized that my mother, a wholly secularized Jew, had an atavistic impulse to obsess over a text and hot swapped the Bill of Rights for the Torah. I'm not suggesting that this resulted in my being well educated about the Constitution, only that while I couldn't give two farts for what my mother thinks about most things about me, every time I have to look up which amendment is which I feel faintly guilty like I am disappointing someone.

Upon further discussion with Mr Bostoniensis, it emerged that another source of his education in American governance was in the Boy Scouts, which he left in junior high. I went and looked up the present Boy Scouts offerings for civics and found that for 4th grade Webelos (proto Boy Scouts) it falls under the "My Community Adventure" ("You’ll learn about the different types of voting and how our national government maintains the balance of power.") For full Boy Scouts (ages 11 and up), there is a merit badge "Citizenship in the Nation" which is just straight up studying the Constitution. ("[...] List the three branches of the United States government. Explain: (a) The function of each branch of government, (b) Why it is important to divide powers among different branches, (c) How each branch "checks" and "balances" the others, (d) How citizens can be involved in each branch of government. [...]")

Meanwhile, I discovered this: Schoolhouse Rock's "Three-Ring Government". I, like most people my age, learned all sorts of crucial parts of American governance like the Preamble of the Constitution and How a Bill Becomes a Law through watching Schoolhouse Rock's public service edutainment interstitials on Saturday morning between the cartoons, but apparently this one managed to entirely miss me. (Wikipedia informs me "'Three Ring Government' had its airdate pushed back due to ABC fearing that the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Government, and Congress would object to having their functions and responsibilities being compared to a circus and threaten the network's broadcast license renewal.[citation needed]") These videos were absolutely aimed at elementary-aged school children, and interestingly "Three Ring Government" starts with the implication ("Guess I got the idea right here in school//felt like a fool, when they called my name// talking about the government and how it's arranged") that this is something a young kid in school would be expected to know.

So I am interested in the questions of "what age/grade do people think is when these ideas are, or should be, taught?" and "what age/grade are they actually taught, where?"

Because where I'm from this isn't "12th grade government", it's second grade government, and I am not close to being done with being scandalized over the fact apparently large swaths of the US are wrong about this.

My question for you, o readers, is where and when and how you learned the basic principles of how your form of government is organized. For those of you educated in the US, I mean the real basics:

• Congress passes the laws;
• The President enforces and executes the laws;
• The Supreme Court reviews the laws and cancels them if they violate the Constitution.
Extra credit:
• The President gets a veto over the laws passed by Congress.
• Congress can override presidential vetoes.
• Money is allocated by laws, so Congress does it.

Nothing any deeper than that. For those of you not educated in the US, I'm not sure what the equivalent is for your local government, but feel free to make a stab at it.

So please comment with two things:

1) When along your schooling (i.e. your grade or age) were these basics (or local equivalent) about federal government covered (which might be multiple times and/or places), and what state (or state equivalent) you were in at the time?

2) What non-school education you got on this, at what age(s), and where you were?

I had a nice experience on the way to work today. Have you ever thought to yourself, "grumblegrumblegrumble I wish they'd asked me for my input before they went and did this! What were they thinking?!" Today, by complete chance, I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to discover Something Bad was going to happen to my local bus stop, due to private citizens, who meant no harm, having no idea that what they were up to was going to impact the stop, and engage them in friendly conversation, and provide them with what they clearly found to be helpful pointers about how bus stops work. They were delighted and grateful, and we may now be getting a bus stop bench. You're welcome, Arlington.

In case you hadn't heard, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court made a very interesting decision pertaining to a Second Amendment case. They are allowing someone who seems to be an utter loon – who was apparently planning on shooting judges – bring a Second Amendment challenge to a firearms charge. From NPR:

In a week highlighted by the national gun control debate, the court ruled that a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to illegal firearm possession may still appeal his conviction on constitutional grounds.

The case began on May 30, 2013, when police suspicions were aroused by a jeep illegally parked in an employees-only lot on the U.S. Capitol grounds. When owner Rodney Class returned and refused to allow a search, Capitol Police obtained a warrant and found two loaded pistols, a rifle and extra magazines of ammunition.

Questioned by the FBI at Capitol Police headquarters, Class identified himself as a "constitutional bounty hunter" and "private attorney general" who traveled the country with guns and other weapons to enforce federal law against judges whom he believed had acted illegally.

A federal grand jury indicted him on a single count of unlawfully carrying firearms on the Capitol grounds. He eventually pleaded guilty, but he later appealed the conviction, contending the law under which he was convicted is unconstitutional.

The lower courts said that by pleading guilty, he gave up his right to appeal. But on Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled that a guilty plea does not mean a citizen automatically loses his right to bring a constitutional challenge to the law under which he was prosecuted.

This is where things get interesting. Three judges dissented. The objections came from Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas – from the right.

I haven't read anybody's decisions, but it sure sounds from these deets like the liberal side of the court decided to give the gun nuts more than enough rope to hang themselves, such that once and for all we get a Supreme Court precedent that, yes, the state can regulate firearm ownership and usage. They've basically allowed someone who has a deeply terrible case the opportunity to relitigate the entire Second Amendment before the Supremes.

I have a question, and I mean this earnestly, as someone who knows too much yet not enough about how the legal system and mental illness intersect.

The news media is reporting that the FBI had been warned by a credible source that Nikolas Cruz was planning to commit a school shooting and had the resources with which to do so, and that the FBI has admitted it "failed to act". From Fox Business:

“Looking in hindsight, [FBI] could have dug deeper, possibly, done the forensics, done court orders to see who had that Instagram account or that handle. There may have been more they could have done.” former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told FOX Business’ Kennedy.

It's also being reported elsewhere (sorry, don't have the cite) that the FBI process was supposed to be that such tips to the national hotline were supposed to be forwarded to the local FBI field office, and that that didn't happen here. So that's definitely a thing that should have happened that didn't. But what else?

Say that the tip had been passed on to the FL local FBI, and they had investigated the claims and found them sound. What should they have then done? What legal resources did they have?

That same Fox Business article says:

“In this case, with all the red flag warnings that they were…I think you could have gotten a restraining order to keep him from even setting foot within 100 feet of that campus and allowed him or would of been able to have him arrested the minute he set foot near that property,” he said.

Okay, that's a thing. Is that a thing you can do in Florida? I... don't think it's a thing you can do in MA? I seem to recall looking up restraining orders in MA, or maybe just Middlesex county MA, and there were two types: one only was for people who had been in romantic relationships with an abuser, and the other was only for people subjected to campaign of harassment. Neither would cover a school in this case.

In fact, part of why I am asking this question is, well, this is complicated, but part of it is that I know for a fact that Massachusetts has a whopper of loophole in our Tarasoff statute, such that it doesn't cover cases where a patient tells a therapist they're going to shoot up an institution or location such as a school. I was in grad school, taking the ethics and law class in Spring 2007, when the Virginia Tech massacre happened. (In case you didn't know, the VT counseling center had had the perp as a client and knew something was terribly wrong.) As you might imagine, we discussed it extensively, and how MA law stood with regards to it.

One of the questions on the final was to propose an amendment to Massachusetts law to close that loophole.

But if we did close that loophole, such that if a patient in Massachusetts told their therapist they were going to shoot up a school, the therapist then can/must notify the police.... what do the cops do about it?

Because another part of why I'm asking this question is that a lot of us therapists – especially those of us who work with violent patients – are extremely leery of calling law enforcement on our patients, because there's a hideous history of cops not believing therapists when therapists tell them that someone is planning to commit violence.

The most famous example, of course, is the Tarasoff case itself, in which the therapist and his boss (director of the school counseling center where he worked) went to the police to notify them that the patient was planning on murdering his ex-girlfriend. They thought they had done the responsible, civic-minded thing, balancing patient confidentiality with our duty to protect society as a whole, by notifying the cops. The cops went to the patient and asked him if was going to murder his ex, and he said no, so they did nothing. The patient then went and killed his ex-girlfriend.

(Note that in this case both the therapist and the clinical supervisor were men, and the cops still second guessed their professional assessment, and dismissed their concerns. Now imagine that, like a majority of therapists, they were women.)

The Tarasoffs – the victim's family – sued the school, and won. This is not as unfair as it perhaps sounds: it turns out that the family was in a position to protect the victim, but didn't know they needed to, because nobody told them. This is the case that established that precedent that a therapist must notify the intended victim, not just the cops, because you can't trust cops not to drop that ball on the floor.

So it seems to me that maybe that's a thing the FBI should have done here: notify the school in question that an ex-student was planning on shooting up a school and they were probably it. But then what? I mean, even assuming they could figure out which school he was planning on shooting up (I'm not sure they had that info), what does the school do with that information? What can the school do with that information?

Police (at least here in MA?) can also involuntarily commit someone they suspect is a danger to others due to mental illness. (That was, I gather, what the therapist in the Tarasoff case wanted and expected the police to do.) We therapists, at least in MA, don't generally call the police to involuntarily commit pre-violent people, because we expect to be second-guessed. Which, btw, is like the most dangerous possible thing for the therapist. Calling the cops on your patient due to credible belief in their intent on commiting violence, and having the cops go tell them and not apprehend them means you now have a violent armed person feeling betrayed by you at large in the community.

What we can do instead is for an ambulance with cops, for protection, where the paperwork gets handled by medical professionals who are going to listen to us, so that's what we generally do; also most forms of therapist (but not the kind I am) can do the legal paperwork for an involuntary commitment themselves. At most clinics, there's always someone covering of sufficient credential to do the commitment paperwork, in case the situation arises. (I've done a "pink slip" now, myself, which was signed by the psychiatrist on duty.)

And that's not even getting into the whole thing about our fear that if we call cops on our patients, the cops will shoot our patient, which is a thing that happens. (Or, you know, shoot us.)

So, my point is, as a therapist – and as a therapist who has a higher than typical contact with both violent patients and law enforcement – I have a lot of... dubiousness? skepticism?... about the usefulness of law enforcement in preventing violence.

In some important sense, I don't know what it might be reasonable to expect/want law enforcement to actually do when someone – a therapist or otherwise – notifies them that someone is planning a school shooting.

One of the issues here is that in the US we're really big on not infringing on people's liberties before they've committed a crime. This comes up in a big way in mental health law, where involuntary commitment is seen as a way to get around the problem of not being able to arrest someone for a crime they've not yet commited, but espoused. Except that the judges that hear such cases tend to likewise be chary of confining someone to a hospital beyond the "three day hold" (which is how involuntaries work in MA), if a violent crime hasn't been commited yet. And perhaps that's as it should be.

(And this just raises the question of what a mental hospital is supposed to do for someone who intends a violent act who is not obviously mentally ill. Honestly, it also raises questions about what it's going to do for someone who intends a violent act who is just personality disordered. Hooboy.)

So it's not at all clear to me that the law supported the law enforcement in Parkland actually doing anything to restrain Cruz before he showed up with weapons. I mean, if he had someone else he was working with, they could be nabbed for Conspiracy, but if not....?

There's a lot of news reports out there right now saying that the FBI should have done something. Yes, almost certainly. But what?

Does anybody know what legal resources Florida – or Broward County – provide law enforcement in this sort of situation? Is there a law mandating that the school be notified there is a threat? Is there some sort of restraining order that would have pertained to this case? Is there some charge, state or fed, that the perp could have been arrested on before killing anybody? Is there something else I'm not thinking of?

I'm particularly interested in hearing Florida-specific answers, but I am also interested in hearing how things are wherever you are – just be sure to mention what the pertinent legal jurisdiction is. I am particularly-particularly interested in hearing from people in law enforcement.

I am doing some research for a post, and tried to find a document (which I know exists, because I've see in in hardcopy) on the Social Security Administration website. Couldn't find it on their site, but did find the contact info for medical professionals in Massachuesetts at https://www.ssa.gov/disability/professionals/procontacts.htm#Massachusetts

It gives two phone numbers: 617-727-7600 and 800-882-2040.
The 617 number gave me the phone company "beep-beep-BEEP! The number you dialed is not in service!" the first time I called it. I figured maybe I misdialed and tried again; the second time I got the phone company "beep-beep-BEEP! The number you dialed, 978-463-0118, has been disconnected. No further information is available." The third, fourth, and fifth (because now I'm intrigued) times I called it, I got the same as the first.

The 800 number went through to the Mass Rehabilitation Commission Disability Determination office, but not to provider; I got a recording indicating I'd got the right office, and that their hours are until 5pm on weekdays (it was 3:41pm when I called), but my options were to dial an extension if I knew it, or press a button for the operator. I pressed the button for the operator.

The phone has been "ringing" now for nine minutes and nobody's picked up.

(ETA 4:03pm: Ooh! I hung up and called the 800 number again, and this time got a receptionist. She did not recognize the number on the SSA website listing for MA at all; said she would report it to her manager, but then didn't take any information from me to report and I don't get the impression she wrote down the 617 number that's listed. Anyways, I asked about the document and I got routed to a manager's vmail, where I left a message. Fingers crossed.)

You may have heard the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize went to something called the Tunisian national dialogue quartet.

It's not a proper name. It refers to an alliance of four civil society organization that came together on the brink of an Islamist civil war to save their country: a national labor union, an organization for businesses, a bar association, and a human rights organization.

This is deeply worth investigating if you are interested in non-violent revolution. It truly looks to me like something new under the sun; if there is precedent to this, I don't know it. (If you do, do comment!)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/09/who-are-the-tunisia-national-dialogue-quartet-nobel-peace-prize-winner

http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/03/27/how-leftist-labor-union-helped-force-tunisia-s-political-settlement

[Content Warning: This concerns torture, but includes no descriptions of it. Includes discussion of the psychology of rape, both effects on the victim and the mindset of perpetrators.]

0. The Problem

Chapter LXXXVI.

If a thief or a robber is apprehended and denies that he is involved, you say that in your country the judge would beat his head with lashes and prick his sides with iron goads until he came up with the truth. Neither divine nor human law allows this practice in any way, since a confession should be spontaneous, not compelled, and should not be elicited with violence but rather proffered voluntarily. But if it just so happens that you find nothing at all which casts the crime upon the one who has suffered, aren't you ashamed and don't you recognize how impiously you judge? Likewise, if the accused man, after suffering, says that he committed what he did not commit because he is unable to bear such [torture], upon whom, I ask you, will the magnitude of so great an impiety fall if not upon the person who compelled this man to confess these things falsely? Indeed, the person who utters from his mouth what he does not hold in his heart is known not to confess but to speak.[cf. Mt. 12:34] Therefore leave such practices behind and heartily curse the things which you have hitherto done foolishly. Indeed, what fruit shall you have in those practices, of which you are now ashamed. Finally when a free man is caught in a crime, unless he is first found guilty of some wicked deed, he either falls victim to the punishment after being convicted by three witnesses or, if he cannot be convicted, he is absolved after swearing upon the holy Gospel that he did not commit [the crime] which is laid against him, and from that moment on the matter is at an end, just as the oft-mentioned Apostle, the teacher of the nations, attests, when he says: an oath for confirmation is an end of all their strife.[Heb. 6:16]

From a letter of Pope Nicholas I in response to the Questions of the Bulgars A.D. 866

Modern Americans are confused as to what torture is for. It seems to me this is proving a very useful confusion for certain parties, as I will explain below.

Torture doesn't actually have a place in American culture. I mean that descriptively rather than prescriptively: search and you will find it has no assigned place in our judicial process, and no American encounters actual, real life torture as a routine part of State business. Which: good. This is one of the triumphs of our civilization.

But there's a weird unintended consequence of this. Americans, not having any direct, regular experience of torture, wind up getting all their ideas about torture from the media. Most of their sources are fictional, and show torture in ways that mythologize it. The other sources are factual, but necessarily involve reporting on foreign cultures. And most especially in the category of "foreign cultures" I put the past – our own Western cultures before the modern age. Foreign cultures are also something Americans are notorious for mythologizing.

Consequently, it is incredibly easy to lie to Americans about torture in certain ways. Americans are so clueless about torture, they fail to notice certain incongruities in accounts of torture. This is Dunning-Kruger Effect territory: being so ignorant, one is even ignorant of one's ignorance.

Reading the news of the Senate summary of their report on the CIA's use of torture, a little bell rang in the back of my head, and I started reading into the history of torture. Lightly – I've not the time or stomach to do more – but there's some things I'm sniffing out in what I read that suggest some things about what happened in the CIA which are... not, shall we say, what they represented them to be.

( Yeah, you should totally read this. Sorry. [7,900 Words] )

This post brought to you by the 45 readers who funded my writing it – thank you guys so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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This post originally posted at https://siderea.livejournal.com/1185556.html

Re my previous post on the McArdle Bridge:

Despite their best efforts, I have figured out that the bridge -- or at least the raising and lowering of it -- is the responsibility of the City of Boston Department of Public Works, and I have emailed the commissioner through their web form.

I do not know why the DPW has AFAICT no mention of their drawbridges (assumed plural) on their website. I discovered this fact from a news story that was copypasta in a forum discussion, said story concerning a drunk drawbridge operator who failed to open the McArdle apparently due to intoxication. Article mentioned that the drawbridge operator was a DPW employee, so.

Watch on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw

So what would it take to get laws passed criminalizing false reporting?

If it's going to rain EVERY FREAKING TIME we vote, I move we get umbrella stands for the voting booths.

Hey, Cantabrigians (or other people who for some weird reason have an interest in Cambridge, MA, USA local politics), anybody have any opinions of just whom I should vote for, tomorrow? I'm open to hearing arguments.

Sibylla Bostoniensis

If you wanna know the future, simply look into the past

Civics education? [gov, civics]

[civics, surrealism] Serendipity

[civics/SCOTUS, curr ev/US] Speaking of gun control....

[curr ev, civics] What Should the FBI Have Done?

[civics, healthcare] Oh, SSA

[civics] How to Change the World, a Case Study: The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet

[curr ev, civics, Patreon] On Torture: An Inquisition of the CIA

[tech, civics, MA] Further on the Bridge Monitoring

[civics] How Fox Gets Away With It

[civics] And yet again....

[civics, ma] Whom should I vote for?

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April 2026

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