The increasing lack of due process in US courts.
The increasing use of ‘junk science’ to make major policy decisions.
The increasing violence which probably stems from the War on Drugs.
The increasing number of ‘mystery chips’ which are being put into our communications,transportation and other critical computer systems.
DUE PROCESS is the legal term for a fair process. Generally, it means that people are notified regarding going to court and what the court is going to decide. It means that you can call witnesses for yourself and cross examine witnesses against you. Both sides have to exchange information so that no one is surprised when they get to court. Both sides are listened to carefully and fairly by the judge and/or jury. Due process tries to insure that decisions are made based upon facts and law, not on whether you correctly followed a complex web of civil or criminal procedure.
JUNK SCIENCE is the term I use for science which decides the result it wants and then sets up the study so that such a result is a foregone conclusion. The best example I know for this is the government study on the effects of marijuana for relief of nausea in AIDS patients. The government required that the study use the marijuana grown by the government. There were two problems with this requirement. The marijuana provided by the government was of extremely poor quality. The government stored the marijuana cigarettes in the freezer, and many had turned to mush before they ever got smoked.
VIOLENCE BECAUSE OF THE WAR ON DRUGS. We cannot stop the import and sale of illegal drugs even if we build a “Berlin Wall” completely circling our country. People escaped over the Berlin Wall and drugs are way easier to smuggle than people. If we cannot stop the drugs from coming in, making them illegal just makes them expensive. When you make it illegal to possess a substance that people insist on using anyway, you make that substance cost more. The difference in the cost of manufacturing and/or growing the drug and the amount the drug is worth on the street can be enormous. As the war on drugs escalates, drug dealers invest some of their huge profits in weapons, which they use on law officers, rival dealers, and innocents.
Legalizing drugs means that you can tax the sale of the drugs. Legalizing drugs means that attorneys can bring lawsuits for the damage that the drugs do to people. Legalizing drugs means that you can insure that the drugs are grown without pesticides and do not have any harmful added ingredients. Legalizing drugs means we can concentrate law enforcement efforts on keeping drugs out of the hands of children.
MYSTERY CHIPS are really frightening. The chips we are manufacturing, mostly overseas, are increasingly complex. Because chip makers are afraid of theft via reverse engineering, there is currently NO WAY to verify that a particular chip does what it is supposed to do. Worse, we cannot tell if a particular chip does MORE than it is supposed to do. I believe that we can solve this problem using chip designers and statisticians. Statistics are necessary as some of these chips have more than a million tiny internal electrical switches. (Think of them as hard wired
computer programs.)
We are all concerned about viruses and worms attached to emails and downloads. These virus and worms can destroy the information we store on our computers. My nightmare is that there are viruses and worms hidden in the mystery chips, and that these viruses and worms could be activated, perhaps by a government who wishes to be subtle. These mystery chips are being used in our computers, our airplanes, our trains, our phones, in everything electronic.
I AM ASKING you all to make a small donation to the Pamela Smith Center for Law and Science. I promise to use the money to address these issues. Because I will be required to try to change some laws and regulations, your donation will NOT be tax deductible.
TO DONATE go to www.PamelaSmithCenterForLawAndScience.com
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