SO, EXACTLY WHAT PART OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT DID JUDGE HILLERI MERRITT NOT UNDERSTAND?

Friday’s LA Times editorial explains it all:

A unanimous panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal has at last cleaned up a shameful legal mess, ordering L.A. County Superior Court Judge Hilleri G. Merritt to end her prior restraint on the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier this month, after first granting The Times the right to photograph a criminal defendant appearing in her courtroom, Merritt changed her mind and ordered the paper not to publish the lawfully taken picture. The Times, showing more respect for the law than Merritt did, obeyed her order while it appealed, first to her to reconsider and later, when she refused, to the higher court. On Thursday, that court inevitably concluded, as it was required to, that she had violated the 1st Amendment.

Writing for himself and two colleagues, Judge Sanjay T. Kumar produced a stark reminder of just how far Merritt had strayed from well-established law in waging her campaign against open courts and a free press. Riffling through citations, the court noted that “an order enjoining publication of a photograph of a suspect in a pending court proceeding is classic prior restraint of speech.” Publishing “lawfully obtained, truthful information about a matter of public significance cannot be restrained unless it is necessary to protect a state interest of the highest order.” And the “barriers to prior restraint remain high and the presumption against its use continues intact.” Not once, as Kumar made clear, has any appellate court concluded that those barriers could be overcome in a case such as this…

Read the rest.

And here’s the news story by Andrew Blankstein on the same topic.

And here is a previous LAT editorial on the matter.

AND here’s what Wired Magazine had to say earlier this month.

By the way, it is not entirely comforting that a criminal court judge hearing high profile cases has such a high-handed and faulty an understanding of the legal principal prohibiting prior restraint.

FYI: The photo above is from an LAPD handout of murder defendant Alberd Tersargyan—whose in-court photo—taken originally with the permission of the judge—was the one in question.

South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have receive death threats based on references to the prophet Muhammad who, in the cartoon, was dressed in a bear costume. (Well, actually the Muhammad was thought to be in the bear outfit. However, it turns out it is actually Santa. So Muhammad is never pictured on the series—disguised or otherwise. But no matter.)

The LA Times (among others) has the story:

In its 200 shows, the irreverent animated program “South Park” has mercilessly satirized Christianity, Buddhism, Scientology, the blind and disabled, gay people, Hollywood celebrities and politicians of all persuasions, weathering the resulting protests and threats of boycotts.

But this week, after an ominous threat from a radical Muslim website, the network that airs the program bleeped out all references to the prophet Muhammad in the second of two episodes set to feature the holy figure dressed in a bear costume. The incident provides the latest example that media conglomerates are still struggling to balance free speech with safety concerns and religious sensitivities, six years after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slain for making a film critical of Islamic society.

Comedy Central declined to comment on the latest incident. But “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly disagreed with their bosses’ handling of the situation. A statement posted on their website said that executives “made a determination to alter the episode” without their approval and that the usual wrap-up speech from one character didn’t mention Muhammad “but it got bleeped too.”

The network may have thought it had no choice after revolutionmuslim.com, the website of a fringe group, delivered a grim warning about last week’s episode, which depicted Muhammad dressed as a bear….

(Again, it turns out not to be Muhammad at all.)

On the site Matt and Tray were warned that “what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show.” A photo of Van Gogh’s body was posted along with the written threat.

May Trey and Matt—and their gross and glorious comedy work—stay safe from any kind of harm. And may those who would make such threats find tolerance.

Here is what Aziz Poonawalla, blogger and Muslim, said about the controversy, and the threats, on Beliefnet.

Some Poonawalla clips:

Most other blogs and news sites are not providing a link to RevolutionMuslim.com - which appears to have been hacked, possibly by angry fans of the show – but I think it’s important to let these idiots know that they are being critiqued. And my critique of them is much the same as my critique of Anwar al-Awlaki: they are cowards, who seek to gain publicity for themselves.

[SNIP]

In fact, it is precisely the over-reaction of extremist muslims who wave around threats of violence that leads to more depictions and insults to the Prophet, not less. The right way to inculcate respect for the Prophet among non-muslims is not to act like a barbarian but to simply express ourselves and explain our beliefs – and then excercise our own right, to walk away. It is by their own actions, supposedly in “defense” of the Prophet, that these extremists actually cause greater offense to the Prophet’s legacy than any mere cartoon…

UPDATE:

This was not posted last night, but here is what Jon Stewart had to say about the situation:

PS: For the record, I would appreciate it if CNN-–which has been bordering on the provocative and overly sensational in its coverage of this loathsome incident—would focus an equally harsh eye on those who suggest and provoke violence in the direction of political figures with whom they disagree.

PPS: Also, for the record: I love South Park.

WHY DOESN’T CALIFORNIA SAVE $$$ THROUGH “MEDICAL PAROLE?”

Two weeks ago I had lunch with a woman who is the Catholic pastor of a large California prison. I should mention that she is no neophyte in the corrections world. She’s worked at LA County’s jails, at an out-of-state prison, and at an in-state institution or two before she got to where she is now.

We were meeting about another matter entirely but, in the course of the conversation, talk turned to some of the guys she sees inside whom she really thinks ought to be let out—simply because they are so incapacitated, that keeping them locked up on our tab doesn’t, she said, make any sense.

The pastor wasn’t talking about any kind of compassionate parole. She was just talking cost/benefit.

This week in an excellent article in the Sacramento Bee, the federal monitor in charge of California’s prison health care system, J. Clark Kelso, has said much the same thing.

“I am keenly aware, as are the courts,” Kelso said, “that a dollar that we can save in the prison health care program is a dollar that can be spent on other important priorities for the state, such as education, money for children, the elderly, other health care programs.”

An aide in Kelso’s office said that, conservatively, the prison system could save $213 million over five years by paroling just 32 inmates identified as severely incapacitated.

Twenty-one of those 32 inmates are in nursing facilities or hospitals outside prisons, which requires spending for expensive guard time — including overtime — as well as huge health care costs.

These 21 inmates’ average annual health care and guard costs total more than $1.97 million apiece — a total of $41.4 million a year for 21 individuals, said Kelso aide Luis Patiño.

With all this and more in mind, on March 17, Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco introduced a bill to create medical parole.

Leno said 1,300 inmates’ health care costs exceed $100,000 a year, and that up to 700 prisoners could qualify for a possible medical parole under his bill.

With full implementation of his bill, Leno said, the state could save at least a couple of hundred million dollars a year, more than the receiver’s initial $213 million estimate spread over five years.

There’s a lot more in the way of facts and figures on this issue, so read the rest.

DAD OF FALLEN MARINE HAS TO PAY VILE & CREEPY PICKETERS’ COURT COSTS???

Yeah, this is actually kind of usual, from a legal perspective, but given the situation, from a moral and emotional perspective it’s—what’re the words I’m looking for?—Oh, yeah. Intolerable and psychotic.

Here are the details from the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Only a few months before both sides square off in the U.S. Supreme Court, the father of a slain Marine has been ordered to pay legal costs for a Topeka-based church after the $5 million judgment he won from the congregation in 2007 was overturned on appeal.

Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine who was killed in March 2006 in Iraq, learned late last week that he had been ordered to pay legal costs for Westboro Baptist Church in connection with a lawsuit he brought against the congregation after some of its members picketed his son’s funeral in March 2006 in Westminster, Md.

Late Friday, Snyder learned he would be liable to pay the legal costs of the appeal by the Westboro church and the Phelpses in the amount of $16,500, said his attorney, Sean E. Summers, of York, Pa., in a phone interview late Monday night.

“We’ve been talking all day and all night,” Summers said of himself and Snyder. “He is disappointed. It’s kind of like rubbing his nose in it.”

I don’t know how this gets solved. As the C-J mentions, the case is on its way to the Surpremes—and the court is, I think, going to be reluctant to shut up the protesters, no matter how repellent they are. Sometimes freedom cuts against the righteous.

So what to do? I don’t know. But the idea of the family of the dead Marine having to pay up to these hate-filled Westboro people….it’s pretty hard to take.

BOSTON GLOBE GETS PEEK IN FBI’S “SPECIAL FILE” ROOM

Here’s a snippet of the Globe’s report. It explains itself.

It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.

It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups.

It is the FBI’s “special file room,” where for decades sensitive material has been stored separately from the bureau’s central filing system to restrict access severely and, in more sinis ter instances, some experts assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it.

Established in 1948 under the reign of notoriously secretive FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, it remains in use today at FBI headquarters in Washington to safeguard what the bureau considers its most highly sensitive information.

Read the rest here.

Go Globe!

Go FOIA!

2 IMMIGRANTS FALL DISASTROUSLY THROUGH THE ICE DETENTION CRACKS

The LA Times & the Center for Investigative reporting have a disheartening tale by Andrew Becker about two mentally disabled men who had finished serving time on low level assault charges—but who were stayed in jails and prisons for years following the finish of their mandated sentences. One was kept for an extra four years, the other an extra five.

As for their crimes, one threw a rock during a gang fight, the other got in a scuffle over tomatoes picked without permission.

The problem is that both men were scheduled to be deported after their sentences were served-–but it was clear that neither could live on his own in Mexico.

Neither man was undocumented. Both had immigration papers. That wasn’t the issue. Yet, under current immigration law, their crimes mandated they be tossed back to their country of origin—which was Mexico.

So, unsure what else to do, the government merely held on to them—alleges a new lawsuit.

Here’s the story.

The Supreme Court will be looking at the case involving the Westboro Baptist Church—a hate group so uttlerly disturbed that it parodies itself, with members who revile long list of their fellow humans, gays and Catholics, at top of the list.

The court will have to decide whether to protect this group’s speech under the first amendment. This past weekend, the LA Times ran an editorial explaining—rightly—why we must protect the rights of these reprehensible, poison-filled people.

The word “vile” is inadequate to describe what members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a fringe group obsessed with homosexuality, did on the day of the memorial service for Marine Lance Corp. Matthew A. Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. The question for the Supreme Court is whether their despicable conduct is protected by the 1st Amendment — and the answer is yes.

Read the rest.

Can the Patriot Act make it a crime for an American to advise a group that has been designated a terrorist organization—if that advice pertains only to human rights and ways to seek peace?

It is this question that was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The Americans challenging the restriction are the LA-based Humanitarian Law Project and its president, USC professor, Ralph Fertig, who has advised a Kurdish rebel group in Turkey.

This is from the AP:

The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday to balance the constitutional rights of humanitarian aid groups with the government’s efforts to combat terrorism.

The issue arose in a challenge by aid groups and individuals to parts of a key anti-terror law that bans “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, even when that support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

The aid groups involved had trained a group in Turkey on how to bring human rights complaints to the United Nations and assisted them in peace negotiations, but suspended the activities when the U.S. designated the Turkish outfit a terrorist organization in 1997. They also wanted give similar help to a group in Sri Lanka, but it, too, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1997.

Now keep in mind, we are not talking about groups like Al Quaeda that have been designated as our enemies, and thus are subject to a host of restrictions, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act.

The organization in question is a Kurdish rebel group called the PKK.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg does a good job of teasing out more of the issues.

And the LA Times David Savage has this post-hearing update.

A ruling is expected in June—with Kennedy again the swing vote. (Or maybe Roberts will also have a sensible moment. At least it is comforting to think so.)

PS: AND THE TWISTED LOGIC AWARD FOR TUESDAY’S HEARING GOES TO Antonin Scalia for this dandy quote: “It hasn’t criminalized speech. Most of that aid and assistance that is prohibited is not in the form of speech, but it happens to include speech as well.I think that is quite different from a law that is directed explicitly at speech.”

(Um, Antonin. Dude. That’s like saying if you advise the criminal to turn his or herself in, or if you similarly tell the criminal not to shoot the hostage, we can criminalize that speech as aiding and abetting, and such a statute in no way impinges on the First Amendment. That’s—-what’s the phrase I’m looking for?—oh, yeah: totally whacked.)

I’m still doing light posting, but here’s a story from the Miami Herald that merits attention.

It is about a free speech case involving a student who said some angry things on Facebook about her teacher, and was punished by the school principle as a consequence.

Here’s how it opens:

A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher -- and was later suspended — had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.

The ruling not only allows Katherine “Katie” Evans’ suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.

The courts are in the early stages of exploring the limits of free speech within social networking, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, which filed the suit on Evans’ behalf.

“It’s one of the main things that we wanted to establish in this case, that the First Amendment has a life in the social networking technology as it applies to the Internet and other forms of communication,” Simon said.

In 2007, Evans, then a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School, created a Facebook page where she vented about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

But instead of other students expressing their dislike of the teacher, most defended the teacher and attacked Evans.

A couple days later, Evans took the page down.

But after Principal Peter Bayer found out about it, he bumped Evan from her Advanced Placement classes, putting her in classes with less prestige, and suspended her for three days.

There’s more. So read it here.

And here’s an MSNBC story about other incidents in which student speech is challenged, even outside school.

On Sunday, the LA Times reported that the Menifee Unified School District, a school district located in Riverside County, has pulled a book from all school library shelves because of its racy content. And what lust-drenched book might the Menifee school folks have found morally problematic? Tropic of Cancer?— Henry Miller’s 1934-published novel that, while a bit long-in-the-tooth now, is still a perennial favorite when it comes to outraged shelf-yanking

Nope, the tome in question is the Merriam-Webster’s 10th edition dictionary. Its offense? It includes somewhere in its pages the term “oral sex.”

Evidently one—count ‘em, one—- parent complained so, rather than choosing a thoughtful and measured response to calm the histrionic parent, the local district officials instead swooped in and purged all the district’s schools of the dictionary. (Without consulting the school board, I might add.)

Let me repeat that. School officials removed the Webster’s dictionary from every library in the district on account of the dictionary’s “sexually graphic” content.

The Press Enterprise has a story which features the district’s explanation for the book banning:

School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the “sexually graphic” entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus…..

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.

“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” Cadmus said.

Well, as it happens, I have a rather substantial pile of dictionaries in my personal library, so perhaps I can aid Ms. Cadmus in her search. I don’t have the the 10th edition of Merriam-Webster, but I do have two other Webster’s dictionaries among my array of reference books, both of which are approximately the size of bedside tables. Let me just haul ‘em out and take a look.

Okay, neither of my Webster’s volumes contain the term “oral sex.” (Oral herpes, yes, oral sex, no.)

As one might imagine, they do, however, include the term “sex,” (which would logically seem to be the offending part of the term so objectionable to the Menifee parent). And, in a random (but enthusiastic) search of Webster’s 2nd edition (first published in 1955) I found that it also includes words like orgasm, prostitute, orgy, sodomy—and sodomitical, a word I didn’t previously know existed but toward which I developed an instant affection, so much so that I have now vowed to work it into sentences as often as possible, as in, “My dear Ms. Cadmus, perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic, but I’m rather concerned that the new Supreme Court decision—you know the one I mean, yes? It’s known as Citizens United— is going to have a distinctly sodomitical affect on the democratic process. What do you think?”

I find that my half-century old Webster’s also has a whole pile of other words and terms of which the vigilant Menifee-ites really should take note, things like chastity belt, condom, gonorrhea, pimp (“a go-between in illicit sexual affairs; especially a prostitute’s agent”) and dildo (“a device of rubber, etc. shaped like an erect penis, and used as a sexual stimulator: also spelled dildoe…”)

Frankly, I’d have found many, many more treasures for Ms. Cadmus and friends (really, try it yourself) but I had to stop because the dog was bugging me to go for a run.

Before I put on my running shoes, however, I did take the time to check to see if the good old 1955 Webster’s had within its august pages the word cunnilingus. Webster’s did.

(n [L., lit., from cunnus, vulva, and lingere, to lick] a sexual activity involving oral contact with the female genitals.)

It also had fellatio (n. [from L. fallatus p.p. of fellar, to suck] a sexual activity involving oral contact with the male genitals)—thus providing proof positive that the dictionary purgers at the Menifee Unified School District define the term “logic-phobic, anti-literate jackasses,”—which I did not find in the 2nd edition of Websters but, if it is not included in the 10th edition, I truly hope Webster’s will consider adding in the 11th edition, with a nice photo of the Menifee folks to illustrate.

Sadly, even if Webster should take my suggestion, those being pictured would never learn of the honor because, as my brief search has just demonstrated, if we follow the Menifee action out to its natural conclusion, we will have no dictionaries of any kind in our school libraries at all.

NOTE: More news in a while.

As most of you know, on Thursday morning the US Supreme Court blasted aside a century old ban on corporate elections spending with its 5/4 decision in the case known as Citizens United.

Here’s how the LA Times explains it:

Until now, corporations and unions have been barred from spending their own treasury funds on broadcast ads or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate. This restriction dates back to 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt called on Congress to forbid corporations, railroads and national banks from using their money in federal election campaigns. After World War II, Congress extended this ban to labor unions.

Now all that has been handily wiped away.

If you want to know a bit more about the broad strokes of the case, listen to NPR’s Nina Totenberg.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times also has a fairly cogent description:

Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted.

Ironically, this comes right at the time when ordinary Americans have been growing increasingly alarmed and enraged by the way that big money interests influence lawmaking, both on Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle. However, after Thursday’s decision, those big money interests will be able to go upstream of the pesky and time consuming lobbying process in order to focus directly on buying electing the lawmakers whom they believe will view their agendas from the most felicitous possible perspective.

The Citizen’s United decision is being presented as a free speech issue. Yet, it was not really speech that was being protected on Thursday. It was the ability to use unlimited corporate money to slam or promote a candidate. Had it been so inclined, the court could have narrowcast its ruling to address the principle that was the supposed center of this case, which was the right to show, shortly before an election, an attack dog documentary on Hilary Clinton.

But the five Supremes who voted to give Citizens United its victory, went much further than a decision that would have merely viewed the documentary as protected. Instead the court gave its blessing to the corporate right to spend an unrestrained amount of cash in promoting and buying time for said documentary— or election ads or whatever form of electioneering a corporation thinks will most benefit its candidate of choice. Cynically, the court shrouded all this suddenly unfettered corporate elections spending under the cloak of the First Amendment.

In his written dissent, an impassioned Justice Stevens, vehemently objected to the Constitutional slight of hand that would magically transform a Lehman Brothers or a Pfizer into a…well….person. Here’s how Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick puts it in her article on the ruling,The Pinocchio Project: Watching as the Supreme Court turns a corporation into a real live boy:

Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the bench on the principle that corporations “are not human beings” and “corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.” He insists that “they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”

But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the “voices of the real people” who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is “to confuse metaphor with reality.” Today that metaphor won a very real victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real corporations are feeling very, very good.

The rest of us, I am sad to say, should feel very, very worried.

In the aftermath of the 2006 cyber-bullying case that led to 13-year-old Megan Meier’s suicide, there has been a predictable effort to clamp down on any actions by students that seem even vaguely similar to the fatal case. There is also a movement to perhaps criminalize such actions.

Now, however, free speech advocates are pushing back.

LA Times writer Victoria Kim writes a very informative and thoughtful article on the topic that begins with a story about Beverly Hills girl who was the victim of mean girl video in which a bunch of fellow students said creepy things about her on camera and posted it on YouTube. School officials reacted by suspending the student who did the YouTube posting. Her parents took the case to court and, last month, an LA Federal judge sided with the mean girl.

To allow the school to cast this wide a net and suspend a student simply because another student takes offense to their speech, without any evidence that such speech caused a substantial disruption of the school’s activities, runs afoul” of the law, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson wrote in a 60-page opinion.

“The court cannot uphold school discipline of student speech simply because young persons are unpredictable or immature, or because, in general, teenagers are emotionally fragile and may often fight over hurtful comments,” he wrote.

School administrators will be appealing.

Although the female grizzly mother in me wants all the video-posting little wretches suspended with extreme prejudice, my wiser self agrees entirely with Judge Wilson.

Read the rest of the story. It takes a multi-sided look at a complex question with far-reaching implications.

NOTE: I admit, I took the night off last night because it was my birthday, and I was celebrating with friends and family. (My son and his girlfriend cooked for all concerned. How cool is that?) I am running off shortly, but I have a pile up of good stories, so stay tuned.

NOTE 2: Speaking of parents and worry, over the weekend, there was an alcohol-related death of a South Pasadena teenager that was reportedly related to a high school party. According to the back stories I have heard, the tragedy appears to have some similarities to the Orinda case.

The PEN USA Annual Literary Awards Dinner was Wednesday night.

If one is a writer (or an editor or a writers’ agent) it is fun to hang out for a night with a ballroom full of other writerly types, most of whom look distinctly startled to find themselves dressed up and away from their computers.

Among the dressed up and startled were:

Sandra Tsing Loh, who looked fetching in skinny black pants and pigtailed hair…. LA Times Op Ed editress Sue Horton who went for black button-up elegance, novelist/memoirist Aimee Liu, who had on a cunning little beaded number, and journalist Sara Catania who wore a very cool girly, frilly, sheerish thingy.

(The men looked swell too but, with a few exceptions, their accessories were less notable.)

Of course, the point of the evening was to give an array of literary awards (and to raise money for PEN’s excellent programs, like PEN in the Classroom, and others).

All the PEN awards are listed here. But memorable among them were:

Steve Lopez, who won the creative nonfiction award for his terrific book The Soloist, about his (still ongoing and daily) relationship with homeless, mentally ill and gifted violinist, Nathaniel Ayers.

The always amazing Elmore Leonard, who won the Life Achievement award, and dispensed a few nuggets of writing advice when he accepted the prize, including his now classic: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

(Note to my writing students: A good idea to at least consider.)

Also memorable, was the choice of Linda Ollson, of Texas Monthly, who won the night’s award for Literary Journalism for her story Before and After, about the affects of an immigration raid at the Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. in Mount Pleasant, Texas. The story is good for many reasons, among them the fact that it doesn’t grind political axes, but merely shows—through a very human lens—the giant pile of complexities and contradictions that plague America’s immigration policy.

This is about as political as Ollson gets:

…It seems disingenuous to single out individual employees or supervisors, since these sorts of dealings are the product of a de facto bargain struck years ago: Poor people from other countries will make our food under harsh conditions, enabling us to eat cheaply and conveniently. Few people want to spend much time contemplating this, so we tend to construe the fact that chicken is inexpensive as if it were a property of the meat itself, like calorie content, rather than the result of a particular economic arrangement situated in a legal and ethical gray area.

You have to register (for free) to read the whole of Ollson’s piece, but here is how the story opens:

There was a man—call him Max, the name he went by at work, or Pancho, as he was known to his family and friends, or Francisco Garcia-Rodriguez, the name recorded on his birth certificate, or Sealed Defendant 3, the title under which he would eventually be indicted by a grand jury in Texarkana. He was 37 years old and lived in the East Texas town of Mount Pleasant. A father of five, he worked in the mornings and brought his kids to the park in the afternoons. He rooted for the Pumas, a Mexico City soccer team, and took an interest in politics and current events; he was a longtime Reader’s Digest subscriber and had recently plowed through the Spanish translation of Bill Clinton’s autobiography. His job was to load boxes of frozen chicken parts onto trailers at a chicken-processing plant owned by Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, a place locals would often just call Pilgrim’s. He’d worked there for nearly twenty years.

Read the rest of this entry »