Treason and Privacy

Everyone is suddenly talking about privacy. That “traitor” Edward Snowden has certainly weakened our government, so our government says he must come back to the US to be charged with illegally disclosing government secrets.

Has he weakened America? Is our society weaker now that we know more about what our government has been doing for years, still is doing, and wants to keep doing? Isn’t it likely that serious terrorists knew much more than we did about how daily communications were being monitored?

That same claim of treason was made, along with the same threats of imprisonment, when Daniel Ellsberg revealed the Pentagon Papers. They were, in Wikipedia’s words, “a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War.” He was accused in federal court of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and of theft – he could have been sentenced to jail for 100 years.

Perhaps it was good for us all that Ellsberg was hauled into court, because at his trial the depth of Nixon administration corruption and law-breaking was revealed. Nixon’s legal counsel and his Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, John Ehrlichman, helped plan the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to steal all the files about Ellsberg, and called it “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1” in his notes. Their next special project was Watergate.

U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., dismissed all charges, and ruled: “The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case.” Perhaps Judge Byrne was offended that Ehrlichman had offered him the job of FBI Director during the trial.

It is surprising to think that the Obama administration’s response to Snowden has been similar to the Nixon administration’s response to Ellsberg. A Republican President supported the criminal enterprise that broke into Ellsberg’s doctor’s office, and then supported his arrest and prosecution. Now a Democratic President, who made more honesty and more transparency a campaign slogan, supports the arrest and prosecution of Snowden.

Our response as citizens should be very different. In June, 1971, Ellsberg revealed things the government knew and had been covering up: how badly the war in Vietnam had been going for years. The war was already unpopular and Nixon had promised an honorable peace in 1968 during his campaign. The Pentagon Papers speeded up a process of popular protest that forced the end of our bipartisan adventure in Vietnam.

Our current situation is more serious. Snowden has revealed a bipartisan government assault on our privacy and on the Constitution. Recording our phone calls and storing our emails by the National Security Agency was widened by the Bush administration and energetically pursued by the Obama administration, with Congressional approval all along the way, and their own private court system to make attack on those policies impossible.

The best weapon against official law-breaking is publicity. Many Americans now call our government’s espionage against its own citizens snooping, instead of defense against terrorism. A few Democratic politicians are criticizing the NSA, but only after an internal audit found thousands of instances where its own privacy rules were broken. Senator Rand Paul has been the most outspoken Republican critic of NSA, but he does not propose anything more than Supreme Court oversight. So don’t expect Congress to do anything fundamental to end the surveillance of our daily lives.

Public opinion is shifting toward opposition to such government surveillance, but not strongly enough to cause political leaders to stop what they have been doing for years. A variety of recent polls shows that Americans are divided about whether this NSA eavesdropping is justified. The Huffington Post poll earlier this month found that 48% believed it was an “unnecessary intrusion into Americans’ lives”. Men were more outraged than women, whites more than blacks or Hispanics, those with less education more than college grads. Opposition to the NSA at this time comes much more strongly from Republicans, who were in favor of snooping when George Bush pushed it, so this might be less about principle than partisanship.

The combination of a few giant companies who carry all of our communications and a government which places its version of security above our right to privacy as citizens means we will be at their mercy unless we offer some alternative view. Here’s one: we don’t trust you to follow your own rules, to respect our constitutional rights, or to use our data only to fight foreign terrorism, so get off my phone line and out of my email.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, August 25, 2013

We Need More Drug Testing

Illinois and many other states have begun to explore the unknown land of legal marijuana. Illinois just became the 20^th state to legalize marijuana for medical uses. Most Western states and most East Coast states north of Virginia have already taken that step. Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational use. Many more states have joined those two in supporting legislation which would prohibit the federal government from interfering with a state=s marijuana laws. Such a law would allow a state to decriminalize marijuana possession without worrying about federal drug laws.

The claims that marijuana is addictive in a way that other substances like alcohol are not, that marijuana usage leads to more dangerous drugs in a way that many other substances do not, that marijuana does more permanent mental damage than products advertised on TV every day, were always ideological, rather than scientific. Research not only made no difference to the proponents of banning marijuana, they actively prevented any research from happening, just as the NRA has prevented research into the effects of guns on our society.

All these old arguments that kept marijuana illegal for decades have fallen before a more powerful argument: marijuana can make sick people feel better. According to Wikipedia, cannabis has been shown to have the following medical uses: Athe amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as gastrointestinal illness. It also has antibacterial effects and is one of the best known expectorants.@

There is nothing new here. Traditional Chinese herbal medicine dating back 5000 years included cannabis as one of the 50 fundamental herbs. Modern medical studies indicate that marijuana may be useful in treating a remarkably long list of diseases, from bipolar disorder to colorectal cancer, from asthma to psoriasis.

It would be interesting to figure out when, how and why the opinions about marijuana of some segments of Americans have changed from the screaming anxieties of AReefer Madness@ to the broad acceptance for specific uses today. There is, however, no rush to complete that sociological project. But we are way behind in knowledge about what medical usage and legalization will mean, and we should already know that now.

Even if the dangers of marijuana have been exaggerated and its medical usefulness is incontestable, it is important for our society to know more about this drug as its use becomes legal across the country. For example, the new law in Illinois allows patients to obtain up to 2.5 ounces per week, or more than 8 pounds a year. That seems to me to be quite a lot. The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Lou Lang, a Democrat from Skokie, defended that number, saying that, AMost don't smoke it, they cook with it or vaporize it.@

It is difficult to find easily accessible information about how much marijuana would be used with different methods of consumption. According to the World Health Organization, a weekly ration of 2.5 ounces would translate into 30 to 60 marijuana cigarettes (joints), which would be an enormous amount for one person on a regular basis. If Rep. Lang is correct (how does he know?), then recipes for pot brownies can be found all over the internet which also would provide a high and constant dose all week with much less than 2.5 ounces.

The question of how much is needed for medical use is much more complicated than that. Does a person=s weight matter? How about age or gender? Treatment for glaucoma might be very different than for nausea. It is not clear that doctors who might prescribe medical marijuana now know enough to write prescriptions tailored to particular patients and their ailments.

Proper dosage is just one of many questions about marijuana usage which can only be answered by research. For that reason, I advocate a serious program of drug testing. Not the kind which is designed to ferret out users of drugs in the workplace B that sort of drug testing is the product of the paranoid reactions to marijuana which have until recently characterized American society. We need scientific drug tests to determine how medical benefits can be maximized through the best methods of cultivation, processing, and dosage.

If our state government has determined that marijuana is a useful medicine, we need to know as much about it as we know about aspirin. Suddenly legalizing 2.5 ounces per week per patient without much more complete knowledge is reckless legislating.

Fortunately, marijuana is remarkably safe. Research published in AThe Lancet@, one of the best known medical journals in the world, shows that AThere are no confirmed published cases worldwide of human deaths from cannabis poisoning.@ Unlike aspirin or alcohol or almost any other drug, marijuana has many possible medical uses with little danger to the user. It=s time to replace ignorance with knowledge, in order to get the most benefit from this ancient medicine.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, August 13, 2013

Shut Up and Go Away!

The latest royal birth makes great news for tabloid journalism, but even better is the latest sex message sent by Anthony Weiner to a woman who is not his wife. Weiner was not yet a household name when he was a Congressional representative from New York, or even when he began talking a lot on MSNBC, but now he has become famous for the crotch shots he sends all over the country.

Can he parlay his name recognition into a successful campaign for mayor of New York? Until recently Weiner was leading his main opponent, Christine Quinn, current Speaker of the NY City Council, despite the scandal that made him resign from Congress in 2011. But in the last week we have learned that long after his resignation Weiner continued to send sexual messages and explicit photos to women he had never met. He is now reported to have initiated three new online sexual relationships and maintained them more than a year after resigning. There may have been contacts even after Weiner began his campaign for mayor.

Weiner says this is all in the past, which perhaps is true. Maybe it took him several years to learn that this form of cheating on his wife would be unpopular with voters. But what kind of man sends such messages while in Congress, gets caught and resigns, makes a big deal of publically apologizing to voters and to his wife, then continues to send messages to other women while he plans to run for mayor?

Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia has also recently earned tabloid headlines by using his elected position to finance a lifestyle far beyond the means of virtually all Americans. Bob McDonnell is one of the highest-paid governors in the US, earning $175,000 as of 2011. But that’s not enough for him. A campaign donor, who also has business before the state government, paid for catering at his daughter’s wedding, gave loans of over $100,000 to corporations owned by him and his wife, paid for his wife’s luxury shopping spree, gave McDonnell a $6500 Rolex watch, and more. Some of these gifts were not disclosed on McDonnell’s financial statements.

Now he has apologized for the “embarrassment I brought on my beloved Virginia”. What kind of man uses elected office to enrich himself, helping a wealthy donor tout his products while accepting giant gifts from him?

What happens when politicians get caught with their pants down or their hand in someone else’s pocket? Weiner says that there is no way he is dropping out of the mayor’s race. "You're stuck with me," he said. “I am waging this campaign on a bet, and the bet is at the end of the day citizens care more about their own future than about my past with my wife and my embarrassing things,” he said in Brooklyn. Weiner sent an email to supporters saying that his campaign for mayor was “too important” to give up over “embarrassing personal things”. Too important to whom?

Republicans and Democrats have called for McDonnell to resign, even though his term ends in January. But that’s not going to happen. “I'm not going anywhere. I love this job. There has been no consideration of that,” he told NBC.

Is Weiner’s continued presence in the mayoral race good for New Yorkers? Is it good for his party? Is McDonnell’s spending a few more months in the governor’s mansion good for his “beloved Virginia”? Is it good for his own attorney general, who is waging a tight race to replace him?

Both of these guys are in it for themselves. They can’t do without the power and money that politics can bring. They don’t want to give up their position in front of the camera. They can’t admit that they have proven themselves unfit for office. They want to be the center of attention, even if that attention focuses on their egotistical creepiness, their greed, and their colossally bad judgment.

Why can’t they shut up and go away?

Steve Hochstadt

Springbrook, WI

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, July 30, 2013

The Long Decline

The incredible dominance of Roger Federer in tennis is over. He’ll win more tournaments and win a lot more money, but his power to control other men on the tennis court has diminished. Federer was number 1 in men’s tennis for four years, from age 22 to 27. Now he’ll be 32 in a few weeks, and he has been pushed aside by younger men, Rafael Nadal at 27, and Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray at 26. The same thing happened to Pete Sampras, who was no. 1 for 2 years at age 25 to 26. These men did not suddenly fall off a precipice: both Sampras and Federer later regained their top position for shorter periods. Sampras was 29 the final time he was no. 1.

Recent world record holders in the 100-meter dash, both male and female, set their records in their twenties, except Carl Lewis who had just turned 30 in 1991. Martina Navratilova lasted longer, reaching the finals at Wimbledon every year from age 25 to 33, winning her last Grand Slam that last time. At age 47, she became the oldest player to win a professional singles match.

In a much more physical sport, Michael Jordan prolonged his reign over basketball until he was 36, and still played well enough to score 40 points three times at age 40. Evander Holyfield was world champion heavyweight boxer at age 38, and Muhammed Ali retired as champion at 37.

A handful of athletes have retained their greatness past 35. But even the determined application of biological science by Lance Armstrong in the form of illegal doping didn’t allow him to win a Tour de France after age 33.

The message of these few statistics is clear: the human body generally reaches its physical peak well before 40 years old, usually by the early 30s. After that, a gradual physical decline sets in, lasting the rest of one’s life. When humans lived by hunting, only a small minority lived past 60, so the physical decline did not last long for most.

Over the past 150 years, life expectancy has jumped: Americans can expect to live until their late 70s, and a long list of nations show life expectancies into the 80s. The gradual decline of physical ability now occupies more than half of our lives: an adult can enjoy perhaps 20 years of top physical ability before embarking on a 40-year journey downward.

Fortunately not all of our abilities diminish at such a young age. Certain types of intellectual ability at the highest levels of performance don’t last much longer than physical ability: only the current world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand, among those at the top since Mikhail Tal in the 1960s, has lasted past age 40. But great writers have continued to produce superior prose into their 60s and beyond, despite the complaint of the humorist James Thurber: “With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

I believe that the ability to negotiate daily life, often called common sense, continues to improve until quite late in life, which is why a wrinkled skin and white hair can signal wisdom as well as age. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings quote a popular saying in one of their songs: “Old age and treachery always overcome youth and skill.”

But eventually intellectual decay and continuing physical decline bring people beyond the point where they can no longer care for themselves to a kind of twilight world, where they no longer know what is going on. We have made up words to describe this condition, like Alzheimer’s and dementia, but we don’t yet know what to do with the rapidly increasing number of our relatives who need assistance.

The medical advances which have prolonged the life of the body may have gone beyond the natural life of the brain. I hear myself and my middle-aged peers say that we do not want to continue living if we can no longer remember our names or recognize our children. But how is that to be accomplished?

We cannot simply hope that researchers will come up with a way to prevent Alzheimer’s – that is like building walls of sand to keep the tide from coming in. The expansion of nursing homes has been one social response to an aging population and to changes in the living patterns of the American family. But we need to keep thinking about how to deal with the decline of our bodies and minds in a way that preserves dignity and allows us to decide that decline has gone too far.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, July 23, 2013