Keep Private Property Private

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined about Eminent Domain in this morning’s Des Moines Register. I don’t think he likes the concept very much!

You can find his edited letter, along with comments from other readers, here.

The unedited opinion follows.

The recent report ‘Eminent domain bills take aim at loopholes' demonstrates that the Iowa Legislature can, in fact, work on important legislation in between trying to solve non-issues in the state.

The Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London should have sent shivers down the spines of all property owners. Private property is not something loaned to you by the government until it decides to take it back and give it to someone else. It is a fundamental right in America; private property is the foundation upon which many other rights are built and justified.

There is simply no excuse for government to condemn a taxpayer’s private property and turn it over to their favorite real estate developer or lobbyist to build a lake or river front shopping center.

And take note, Des Moines City Council, it's also no excuse to lean on a property owner in the East Village because you don't like the color of his building.

Way to go Legislature! Tighten up the loopholes. You got this one right!

A Personal Tribute

Today, Rights Boy wants to talk about men’s college basketball; specifically the Drake University Bulldogs.

Every once in a while something takes Right Boy’s mind away from watchin’ out for you, and makes him just sit back and marvel at an amazing, uplifting story. This year, the Bulldogs are such a story. They have had the greatest basketball season in Rights Boy’s adult life. They have won the Missouri Valley Conference for the first time since 1971; after being picked in the pre-season by so-called experts to finish ninth out of ten teams. They won it all!

With a conference record of 15-3, an overall record of 25-4, a win streak of 21 games, and ranked in the NCAA top 25 for the first time in 33 years, they were simply a pleasure to watch.

At the end of the last conference game against Wichita State, the three seniors were recognized for their outstanding contribution to the team.

Leonard Houston, whose father is in prison, was an inspirational story: overcame all odds against him, became an A student as a high school senior, sat on the bench at Drake for three season, and just exploded this year. You can read a great story on Houston at:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/SPORTS020403/803010324/1097

Klayton Korver, from Pella, IA, has been a star on the team for four years and was second in 3-pointers, behind Josh Young. As part of ‘Iowa’s First Family of Basketball,’ Klayton is destined to follow his older brother, Kyle, to the NBA.

Adam Emmenecker, a walk-on (!) led the MVC conference in assists, was the NCAA Academic All-American Player of the Year, and has a good shot to be the MVC Player of the Year. He carries a 3.97 GPA and has four majors! That dude is going to walk into any Fortune 500 company he chooses.

Drake University does NOT mess around with academics; you can’t play sports at Drake and be a bozo in the classroom. The collective GPA of this team is one of the highest in the nation.

Finally, what can you say about Keno Davis? Wins it all in his first coaching season! He is a shoo-in to be the MVC Coach of the Year and has a good shot at the NCAA National Coach of the Year. The genes must run strong in the Davis Family! Dr. Tom turned the team over to son Keno this year, after coaching Drake last year to its first winning season since 1986. It was so great to watch Dr. Tom in the stands this year, just beaming with pride about the team and son Keno.

No matter what happens in the MVC tournament or the NCAA tournament, Drake has had the greatest basketball season since Rights Boy attended, way back in the day. Never thought I’d see it again in my lifetime.

The Rights Wife, not exactly a rabid sports fan, really got into it this year too!

Go Bulldogs! You have made the Drake Nation so proud once again!

Update: Today, Adam Emmenecker was named MVC Player of the Year, joining the likes of Larry Bird and Xavier McDaniel. Emmenecker received 25 out of 40 first-place votes.

On Thursday, Keno Davis was named the MVC Coach of the Year.

1 in 100

There was a great report in the New York Times yesterday about how 1 out of every 100 U.S.adults is now behind bars. You can read it at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?hp

We incarcerate 1% of our adults now, a higher percentage than any other country in the world.

How have we possibly gotten to this point?

I'm not talking about 'prisoner's rights' here, where the government is being sued for a not serving vegetarian meals, by some bozo who doesn't have the fortitude to move his meat away from the peas. I'm talking about how they get there in the first place.

Here in central Iowa we are spending millions on a new jail because the criminal population is overflowing our capacity to incarcerate everybody.

We throw people in jail for years in this country for stunningly trivial offenses. There were originally three ways to go to jail at the federal level - now there are over 4,500.

Is it the Federal sentencing guidelines? Because they have NOT resulted in what they were intended for, and now we are stuck with them. The U.S. Supreme Court has to rule on the fairness of these over and over again.

Is it ‘three strikes you’re out?’ There are people in jail now for most of the rest of their life because they were hungry and metaphorically stole some bread three times, Sort of like Les Miserables.

Is it because people don’t take any personal responsibility anymore? A lot of people in jail were never taken to church as a child, never taught good manners, and there were never any consequences for their bad behavior as they were growing up.

Is it the lack of gun control?

Or, is it because our society is simply fed up with crime, and it’s easier to throw people in jail forever, out of sight, out of mind, and let’s just forget about rehabilitation?

Because folks, it costs you and I a lot of money; almost $24,000 per year per person behind bars. Last year, we spent $49 billion dollars nationally keeping people in jail, and it just goes up every year.

What do you think? There is a survey to the right. Please vote and let me know your opinion. If you have any other ideas, leave me a comment by clicking on that little underlined comments thingy below, and I’ll add it to the survey.

Have a great weekend! And don’t do anything bad, because your butt will get hauled to jail!

I woke up!

Rights Boy has finally woken up from a long winter’s nap. And there is still eight inches of snow on the ground outside! When is this global warming thing going to kick in around here?

Today, Rights Boy wants to talk about a couple of his good friends.

First, I’d like to introduce you to Gul DuCurry – pride of the Cardassian Empire.

Don’t mess with Gul DuCurry; if you run into her in a dark alley, slowly turn the other way and run, because she will kick your ass!

Her nickname is Golda Curry, and you can see her demonstrating martial arts and coordinating competitions at celebrAsian, Iowa’s 6th Annual Asian Heritage Festival, on May 17th at the State Capitol East Complex. For more information, check out the site http://www.celebrasian.org/.



Second, please meet Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean hangs out on the Des Moines Register’s web site, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/, commenting on news stories and blogs. He’s sort of a Will Rogers, Mark Twain kind of guy; he can’t come up with anything original himself, but he likes to write short zingers at others.

He is often featured in the ‘Reader Comment’ sidebars in the printed version of the Register, recently on topics including the Drake Men’s basketball team, the endless Iowa winter, Urbandale pool situation, bike trails, and Erin Crawford’s garden.


So, summarizing me and my friends:

Rights Boy blogs here,

Mike Burgher writes letters to Editors, Congress, and anyone else who still accepts his mail,

Mr. Clean writes commentary on the Register’s website,

Gul DuCurry kicks your ass.

Any questions?

Click on the little underlined comment thingy below, and leave me a comment!

In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

Oh, my. You know your cause may be in trouble when the New York Times goes after it.



The Times has a nice article on global warming and the “availability entrepreneurs;” activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. This group has started an “availability cascade,” a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear.

From the article:

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, global temperature average was actually lower than any year since 2001; little news coverage.

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. Meanwhile, a large part of Antarctica has been cooling, but that was pretty much ignored.

Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were the calmest in three decades, the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate, nor did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic
and Pacific.”

So, I guess the lesson is, no matter what the weather in 2008, be afraid – be very afraid…

A Look Back at 2007 - Part 1

"There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them."
-- Lawrence Welk

For the next few days, Rights Boys takes a look back at the assaults on our rights in 2007 from our nanny state, surveillance state, police state and of course the state of government stupidity.

NSA Spying

By the end of 2007 there were forty pending lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, MCI, Sprint and other telephone companies, accusing them of violating the law and the privacy of their customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications. This has included the records and full content of the private domestic communications of millions of ordinary Americans. The President and the phone companies hid this information from Congress and the American people for at least six years.

These actions violate at least four major privacy laws that have protected Americans' privacy for over 30 years. The laws deliberately and specifically require telephone companies to safeguard the privacy of their customers’ communications, especially when the government seeks to access them.

Congress is currently considering legislation that would grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies for the illegal actions

PATRIOT Act

Many provisions of the PATRIOT Act were scheduled to sunset on December 31, 2006, but were renewed and strengthened in March 2007. This increased the ability of the government to search telephone, email communications, medical, financial and other records and enhanced the discretion of law enforcement to detain anyone as a terrorism suspect.

RIAA vs. the People

By the end of 2007, the RIAA had sued over 20,000 of its customers for downloading music. Sending threatening ‘John Doe’ letters that contend hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, the RIAA settles for $3000 with mostly frightened teenagers, thus avoiding court and any chance for due process. Not one penny goes to any artist.

In December, the RIAA’s latest position is that simply copying a CD that you own to your computer or iPod is illegal.

We are approaching an age of perpetual copyright where nothing will even again go into the public domain.

And now, your government at work… funny and sad

TSA watch list, Airport Security

Airport officials in Albany, N.Y., were red-faced because a fake bomb planted by U.S. government inspectors slipped through their security system. The fake bomb was included with carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Airport officials did, however, seize the bottle of water.

Political Correctness

A production of The Vagina Monologues in Tallahassee, Fla., was retitled The Hoohaa Monologues, after a woman complained the title was offensive. Meanwhile in Cross River, N.Y., a suburb of New York City , three honors students were kicked out of their high school for saying the word "vagina" during their own reading of The Vagina Monologues.

Saginaw State University in Michigan now forbids the telling of any jokes that may involve "race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital or familial status, color, height, weight, handicap or disability," reports the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. That place must be a laugh riot.

Don’t Mess with Texas

The State of Texas argued before the Supreme Court that a murderer who had been treated for schizophrenia – and defended himself at his trial wearing a purple cowboy suit and issuing subpoenas to Pope John Paul II, President John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ -- is sane and should be executed.

Fiscal Responsibility

The State of Iowa sure got its money's worth when it hired a consulting firm to give advice on how to budget properly. The suggestions made by the firm A.T. Kearney ultimately saved the state government close to $3.1 million. The cost of the consultant? Well, $3.9 million.

In September, the Pentagon paid $998,798 US to a small South Carolina parts supplier for sending two 19-cent washers to Cape Canaveral.

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize, not to be confused with the bauble won by Al Gore, was awarded to the Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The lab was recognized for researching a chemical weapon, the so-called "gay bomb,” which “will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.”

Low Impact Crime

Crime is pretty hard on the environment. Creating, transporting and maintaining a weapon, shooting a handgun or exploding a bomb - these causes a lot of pollution.

So it’s nice to see our local Des Moines metro criminals think about sustainability and go low impact as they do their green crime thing.


A kid armed with a sharp pencil held off authorities for a half-hour at the Polk County juvenile facility today. It was a brilliant move, waving his weapon around and exploiting the rampant fear of getting poked with a pencil lead.







A thug pulled a stick from his sleeve and whacked a man in the face last night, after the man was told to move and refused.





Des Moines police stopped a man who had attempted suicide with his sword. Police confiscated the sword and a spear and battle ax.

An inmate at the Polk County jail has vowed to starve himself unless he is given a vegetarian diet. That’ll teach ‘em.

Rights Boy loves the Earth

Rights Boy sometimes cracks wise at the dire predictions of climate change and the motives of our global prophets. Downright cynical.

But he does believe in conservation, recycling and consuming less instead of more; especially if he can save some money. So he will occasionally give advice on important green issues or solutions.


Rights Boy loves the Earth. Our planet is so-o-o hot.

The core is molten iron around 1,800 degrees F. The crust is mostly silicate rock with a wonderful ability to store vast amounts of heat. The greenhouse effect is the best of all; it keeps the atmosphere and surface warm enough to support human life.

Rights Boy was recently talking to his good friend Andy, who has decided to exploit the Earth’s hotness through geothermal.

Geothermal is a new green technology, used since the time of ancient Rome, which takes advantage of the heat stored in the ground. A steady supply of energy is captured and moved from the Earth to and through the home. Once installed, it uses much less energy, saves ongoing money and reduces pollution compared to conventional furnaces and air conditioners. Andy estimates the pollution reduction equivalent to taking four cars off the road (!!)


This morning I marveled at Andy’s wisdom and selfless act to reduce pollution and save money. So Rights Boy went to the gas station, filled up, dedicated this latest tank to his friend, and turned the thermostat up three degrees when he got home.

Seriously though, Rights Boy thinks geothermal is a good thing. Does anyone else use geothermal and what do you think?

No promotion for you !!

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined again this week in the Des Moines Register; this time ripping into sitting Senators and Representatives who spend all their time running for president and ignoring their day job. You can view the opinion here with comments from other DMR readers. Following is the original unedited version.


I was always taught that voting is an important privilege and responsibility not to be taken lightly. You should be informed and you should vote; if you don’t vote then you don’t have much justification to criticize the outcome. I was thinking about this when Barak Obama came out swinging at Hillary Clinton recently for her vote on an Iran resolution, a vote which he didn’t bother to make at all.

For Senators and Representatives voting is not just a privilege, it is actually their job; to represent the citizens who elected them and pay their salary and endless perks. If they don’t show up for important votes, then they are representing no one, and they are stealing time and money from the taxpayers.

For the third time in this administration, the Senate was required to confirm a new U.S. Attorney General. After the fiasco that was Alberto Gonzales, and with Congress teetering around 15% approval, you would think that every Senator would want to be on record with his or her constituency as participating and voting.

Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, McCain and Obama skipped this vote, no doubt because of higher priorities somewhere in Iowa or New Hampshire. All four Democrats said that they opposed the nomination of Mukasey for Attorney General; but apparently not enough to show up and vote against it.

More and more, it seems like the daily operation of the federal government is interfering with the presidential campaigns. Several of the presidential hopefuls collect, but do not earn, a check for a daytime job in Washington and their own State. Chris Dodd is certainly the most transparent; he appears to be settling down in Iowa and has enrolled his daughter in school. A warm welcome to Mr. Dodd and family, but I do wonder what the citizens of Connecticut think about it.

These days, the duration of a presidential campaign is sometime between two and four years, and there are several sitting Senators and Representatives spending all their time and effort in Iowa with presidential aspirations as their only priority. Why we should reward any of these Senators a promotion to U.S. President, when they don’t even do their current jobs?

Ethanol Redux

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined in the Des Moines Sunday Register on ethanol; “A Crime against Humanity,” according to one United Nations official.

Rights Boy had previously posted the unedited version here. His favorite reader, Anonymous, ripped Rights Boy a new one for the opinion.

You can never please Anonymous!

What does privacy mean to you?

The definitive source for all human information, Wikipedia, defined privacy as “the ability of an individual or group to control the flow of information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively…Privacy may be voluntarily sacrificed, normally in exchange for perceived benefits and very often with specific dangers and losses.”

Merriam-Webster is more succinct. Privacy is “the quality or state of being apart from company or observation…freedom from unauthorized intrusion, as in one's right to privacy.”

Not anymore…

Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Americans can't expect to have privacy, because people give up so much information online already.

Kerr declared, "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won,” and privacy now means that “government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.”

I guess Kerr cannot see the difference between someone choosing to type info into a Google search query, verses the government sifting through one's private records and listening in on phone conversations without the proper warrants.

Our privacy rights are disappearing before our eyes. Between fears of terrorism, cameras and web cams everywhere, shared medical records, or Internet search engines that keep history for two years, there is no privacy. So just give up. And trust the government.

We are frogs in the cooking pot; the water is starting to boil and we don’t even notice.

Meanwhile, A US federal judge has ordered the White House to preserve computer backups of all its e-mail due to pending litigation over missing messages. Apparently the Bush administration has been deleting as much of its electronic history as possible. Some bureaucrat in the White House basement, bless his heart, still believes in privacy!

A crime against humanity

Rights Boy was amused that the Register issued a thistle to United Nations official Jean Ziegler, chiding his grammar, expertise and conclusions for likening ethanol production to a "crime against humanity."

The corporate welfare and subsidies for ethanol production in the United States is probably a crime against taxpayers, but it’s hardly a crime against humanity.

Perhaps now the Register and others will begin to recognize that the United Nations is an organization of politicians - not scientists, not global environmental prophets, not even lobbyists for the Iowa Farm Bureau.

Every UN diplomat and official has his own country’s self-interest, agenda, and product to sell to the rest of us.

So the next time someone from the UN, or the Vatican, or even a Hollywood Academy Award winner tells you that climate change is somehow a crime against the planet caused by human existence, think about it. If he tells you it’s the end of civilization as we know it, we can’t possibly adapt, we should be riddled with guilt and start purchasing carbon offsets, think about his motive and what he is really selling.

Sometimes it’s snake oil.

Irony on Parade

White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that the administration is deeply disappointed with the measures in Pakistan, and agreed in a press conference this week that “it is never reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism.”

Rights Boys wonders if Perino knows the definition of irony.

If you care anything about your constitutional rights you are probably ROTFLMAO.

Rights Boy must be so old. He has fond memories of the good old days when the U.S. Justice Departments protected and upheld rights, instead of trampling on them - before the Patriot Act, wiretapping without warrants, suspension of habeas corpus and unlawful search and seizure – just to name a few.

At least General Muschariff is honest that he has suspended citizens’ rights instead of acting like the people never had them.

First in the Nation in Weird

Most of the time, Iowans are normal, boring, middle-of-the-road farmers, bankers and insurance agents.

But when that special time comes around for Iowa’s ‘first in the nation’ presidential candidate selection, when the spotlight is on, Iowa proves that it is also first in the nation in weirdness. Odd news from Iowa has been so plentiful lately that we have been a regular feature on Fark.com and apparently under consideration for our own coveted weird ‘Iowa’ logo. We have finally made it.

The great pumpkin tax – Just in time for Halloween, Iowa started taxing pumpkins, deciding that they were decorations and not food. Forms were available at grocery stores and pumpkin patches where you could swear to the State that you were going to eat that pumpkin instead of making a Jack-o-Lantern and thus avoid the sales tax.

Boys with toys – A man was arrested in Cedar Rapids after a government agent allegedly found him in an office building restroom with his pants down lying next to an inflatable, anatomically correct doll. Everyone hoped that the doll was of legal age and didn’t have any communicable diseases.



Propping up the mammary industry – $200 or the best offer; a woman who doesn't want her breast milk to go to waste has taken out a newspaper ad in hopes of selling it.









Man’s best friend – Apparently deciding he’d had enough, a dog on a hunting trip pulled a Dick Cheney and blasted a man with a shotgun at close range. ‘Wufff! You go chase that damn duck!’

Stay tuned for more...

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
– Edmund A. Opitz


A recent letter to the DM Register by associate professor Kevin Gannon (“Civics quiz leans sharply to the right”) left Rights Boy wondering about his qualifications to teach history. See his letter at :

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/OPINION04/710230360/1035/OPINION

I agree with Gannon on the need for more civic literacy in our country. It is a sad fact that immigrants who have studied to become American citizens tend to have a better understanding of U.S. history than a typical high school graduate.

But Gannon’s assertion that teaching the principles of “limited government” and a “free-market economy” is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy against academic freedom is absurd and shockingly ignorant coming from a college professor.

America was not founded on the principles of big government and socialist economics. Our Founding Fathers preached that “less is best” regarding government, and its citizens are owed little more than common protection and the opportunity to succeed through hard work.

Unfortunately, through a number of so-called populist or progressive moves, clearly unconstitutional, by both liberals and conservatives, we now have a massive federal government that domestically does very little other than redistributes wealth. The government provides welfare to every special group that you can think of: corporations, farmers, illegal immigrants, even the so-called “poor” that own a house and two cars yet cannot afford health insurance.

Gannon’s contention that right-wing groups are against academic freedom doesn’t match reality. Rights Boy's observation is that conservatives simply want a more comprehensive curriculum than the narrow, cookie-cutter, politically correct socialist nonsense that Gannon teaches.