Lawyer: Client Shot Once

ctnow.com ^ | August 16, 2002 | TINA A. BROWN

[RogerFGay]

In the dead of the night on June 20, 2001, Hartford's SWAT team circled a parking lot and an elementary school rooftop, trying to spot Catalino Morales and his fugitive partner from Pennsylvania.

When the fugitives were spotted between two cars on Plainfield Street, officers yelled, "Police, get down. Police, get down to the ground."

[Harrison Bergeron]

Anything calling itself the "men's" or "father's rights" movement these days does not have the luxury of going to bat for a guy who shoots at cops. It's a war. Sometimes we just gotta leave guys on the battlefield.

[Harrison Bergeron]

To clarify:

"It's a war." (But not a shooting war.)

[okie01]

"This looks unique, but I can assure you that this sort of thing happens all the time."

Guys behind on their child support shoot at the police all the time?

[Orangedog]

They're claiming that it's possible for three shots to kill five people?

He must have been using some of those magic bullets that killed JFK. :)

[Orangedog]

Instead of investing in 3 guns, he should have payed his child support. He also should have considered getting a second job.

Spoken like someone who has never been on the receiving end of the divorce industry. The "getting a second job" deal is not always the common sense move that it was in years gone by. Depending on how one-sided the laws are in any given state, that can get even further behind. In my state, if your income goes up (like from a second job) more than 9%, then the support industry can raise your payments. Then you have one of two unpleasant choices...get a lawyer and contest the increase, or have your payments raised. The lawyer option will set you back AT LEAST $1000. If you go along with the increase, you're on the hook for the higher payments even if you can't work the 2nd job anymore or don't want to work 60 hours a week every week for the next 15 years. In order to get them lowered, you're back at the $1000 lawyer option, and there is no assurance that the judge will approve your request. If you happen to be on the cusp of putting yourself into a higher tax bracket with the extra income from the second job, you're hosed even worse for wanting to make a little extra to make ends meet. If it puts you over the $27,000 AGI level, then you're looking at 27% federal, 7.5% social security and medicare, state and local income taxes combined could be something like 8% depending on where you live and work. Add on another 20% for child support, and that leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 cents for every dollar you make being all yours. Well, it costs money to get to the second job, so you have to figure that in too.

I don't know what this guys situation is, but it's pretty obvious that the police involved in this are at best incompitant, or at the worst, corrupt, as demostrated by their "3 shots to kill 5 deputies" fuzzy math. In any event, shooting at a swat team is not the smartest move someone can make. No one here has walked a mile in this guys shoes, so I'll just sum up his actions by saying that it doesn't require a degree from the school of the bleeding-obvious to think that he probably made a poor choice in who he decided to take a stand against.

[RogerFGay]

Anything calling itself the "men's" or "father's rights" movement these days does not have the luxury of going to bat for a guy who shoots at cops. It's a war. Sometimes we just gotta leave guys on the battlefield.

Personally, I'm not a weak-kneed bogus politician. I don't accept leaving guys on the battlefield. The interferring problem is the same one I have every time I hear about a particular case. I don't know these particular guys. I don't know the circumstances. I can't make judgments in individual cases just from hearing a little about them. I've always refused opportunities to argue about individual cases. But the article is saying that the ultimate cause of this whole thing was that a guy was behind in child support payments. I don't have to reach a conclusion just from this case. I know what's going on generally, and it's wrong. The government is culpable because of their overall behavior toward fathers who owe child support. I'm not extracting that conclusion from the article alone. I already knew that the government's behavior was wrong before I read about this particular incident. My position is that the government is no less culpable when shots are fired. I think at least we can apply the logical fact that two wrongs do not make a right. The government's bad behavior generally is not in any case cancelled by this guy's response.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

The government is culpable because of their overall behavior toward fathers who owe child support.

Yeah, yeah, this guy started shooting at police who were trying to make a lawful arrest. Once you do that, you are, or should be, a dead man. This attempted murderer started shooting because he was about to be arrested on a child support charge. The idiot in Massillon, Ohio a week ago shot and killed a police officer because he wasn't willing to get a traffic ticket. Looks like you guys are only happy when a cop gets killed.

[RogerFGay]

Guys behind on their child support shoot at the police all the time?

I don't know the exact statistics because they won't tell us. In the early 1990s, we were getting regular news coverage of men barracaded in their houses surrounded by police, sometimes killed because they refused to surrender. We got regular reports of fathers killing lawyers and shooting judges. One lawyer in Dallas, for example, representing himself in his own case, pulled a sub-machine gun out of his brief case during a hearing and opened fire. General permission to shoot men who owe child support if they resist has been issued in various places because of the perception of danger.

I don't know if you recall that back in that period courts around the country asked for federal aid to beef up court house security. I haven't surveyed court houses around the country to see what they look like today, but there were plenty of newspaper reports about the new airport type security in court houses. That happened as a response to the response to new domestic relations laws. The rate of violence in court houses increased as a result of the new laws. (I mentioned that at least once in congressional testimony.)

As for the news coverage: The National Organization for Women and other feminazi groups stepped right in and argued that news coverage, which sometimes involved interviewing men barracaded in their homes via telephone was "negotiating with terrorists." (Divorced men are "terrorists" according to NOW -- NOW isn't a terrorist organization for politically supporting the creation of the system that created the problem.) After that, there was a news blackout. It still happens, but you don't see it covered until a guy takes a gun to a day-care center, tells a reporter that he's just trying to make a point, and is immediately blow into small pieces by a SWAT team.

Local prosecutors have on more than one occassion stated that they are more afraid of men in domestic relations cases (which for a prosecutor would mostly be child support) than they are of people who have been arrested for serious crimes such as murder, drug-dealing, etc. When it comes to prosecuting men for the crime of being abandoned by their wives, having their children taken from them, and being ruined financially by the system (in a way from which they can never recover), they're dealing with men who have nothing more to lose -- and they're pissed.

[RogerFGay]

Yeah, yeah, this guy started shooting at police who were trying to make a lawful arrest.

Because he was behind in his child support payments. As I explained the first time, that doesn't make the unlawful child support system benevolent. The plain truth is that men are pushed beyond the brink and then continually harassed. Anybody who doesn't realize that there will be a violent response to that type of behavior is an idiot. The people who designed the current system did it to make an illegal profit, and they don't care how many fathers and police die in the process.

Once you do that, you are, or should be, a dead man. This attempted murderer started shooting because he was about to be arrested on a child support charge.

You're spinning like a top. He wasn't being arrested for attempted murder. The conflict began when they tried to arrest him for being behind in his child support payments. One thing I have to ask you -- why are you so quick to support use of police that are being used in the service of an organized criminal activity?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

One thing I have to ask you -- why are you so quick to support use of police that are being used in the service of an organized criminal activity?

What is criminal is what the courts say is criminal. If someone takes a gun against law enforcement officers carrying out a lawful arrest, they should be made to stop breathing as quickly as possible.

[RogerFGay]

What is criminal is what the courts say is criminal.

What country are you from?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

What country are you from?

I live in the United States, a country with a judicial branch that applies the law to the facts and determines what is legal and illegal. Apparently you live in some nightmare land out of prehistory, in which life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short', and where an individual citizen has the right to take up arms against a law enforcement officer. The only case in which this would be justified is in a revolution to overthrow the government by violence. If someone is taking up arms against the people and government of the United States, like this guy did, they can expect to be put down like the original Black Panthers.

[RogerFGay]

Point #1: You have a strong political view but it's not the American view. The general feeling of the people of the United States, through its entire history is that we shoot dictators before members of their police forces and military shoot us. In the United States, the idea of using the judiciary to support organized criminal operations is not supported by the documents that define its legitimate existence. In other countries, there are no such limits to government and judicial authority as do exist in the US. Therefore, your statement is wrong. The role of the judiciary is roughly as you describe it, but you are absolutely wrong in the absoluteness of your statement. The highest legal authority is the Constitution. In the states, courts are also subordinate to their state constitutions. This limits the legitimate authority of the judiciary to enforce statutes and define law.

Point #2: It is an established fact that the current child support system was designed for profit. The political part of the system was copied from Soviet Russia. It violates state constitutions and the US Constitution to such a degree as to be blatantly unconstitutional in a wide variety of ways, from the establishment of paternity, through setting of child support amounts, and enforcing payment. Based on point #1 above, the courts never had legitimate authority to force anyone to comply.

Point #3: As with any such discussion, I'm watching your spin. As I mentioned in point #2, the political portion of the system was copied from Soviet Russia. You've declared fathers to be terrorists just as any common Marxist extremist would. (You might as well call them refusniks.) In keeping with the political view you're supporting, you must also believe it is the proper role of government to wage war against fathers and destroy the institution of marriage. The effort is intended to destroy a fundamental social unit just as communists would destroy every economic "class" except the one that communists believe will remain the most dependent and supportive of the communist dictatorship.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

He tried to kill a sheriff deputy before. That's why the SWAT team was sent to arrest him this time.

[billhilly]

There are a few posters here who give gun nuts a good name.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

you must also believe it is the proper role of government to wage war against fathers and destroy the institution of marriage

I believe that one of the proper roles of government is to exterminate anyone or everyone who takes up arms against a law enforcement officer engaged in his duties.

Yes it is true the Constitution (and treaties) are the highest law of the land, and every citizen has the right to have an opinion as to what that Constitution means. But the right to use force to enforce that opinion is restricted to the government, which has an absolute monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The sole exception to this is if the citizens, acting together, determine to abolish the government by revolution.

[RogerFGay]

Yes it is true the Constitution (and treaties) are the highest law of the land, and every citizen has the right to have an opinion as to what that Constitution means. But the right to use force to enforce that opinion is restricted to the government, which has an absolute monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The sole exception to this is if the citizens, acting together, determine to abolish the government by revolution.

The legitimate exception you mention is known as Treason and is punishable by death.

The unconstitutionality of the child support laws is not hypothetical. It is something that is known with absolute certainty. Not only that, but we know that they know that they are unconstitutional. We therefore know that they know that they are acting illegally in enforcing them. They do so because federal funding lines their pockets in proportion to the amount of child support paid. Aren't our Congresspersons masterfull people?

These laws have been in force throughout the US for 12-13 years. During that time all attempts at a civil remedy have been tried. Individuals have appealled. Groups have formed for political action and class action suits filed. Letters have gone to politicians, national meetings have been held, people have gone to their state capitals and Washington DC to lobby. No politician or judge can honestly claim that they have not heard there is a problem.

After 12-13 years, there is absolutely no way any reasonable person can view this a simple mistake, either legislative or judicial. The constitution provide a remedies to errors in court orders and in law. The number of levels of appeal is effectively five. But for things so blatantly unconstitutional as what we are talking about, lower courts should have refused to enforce them in the first place, and appellate courts should have dealt with the outliers quickly, establishing precedent that would have kept the whole system in check. In the grand scheme, that is the most important function of the judicial branch of government.

When the judiciary, responding to bribes given by the legislature, conspires to maintain an illegitimate system, we are in a constitutional crisis. The remedy prescribed by the constitution is not available. There is no remedy within the law.

[Cultural Jihad]

The cause of abandoned children is not Congress or laws or government. The cause of abandoned children are the parents who abandon or renounce them. If you don't like child support laws then you should work to make people more personally responsible for their actions.

Here is the moral-liberal dictum: "Allow me to be irresponsible, and in return I'll allow you all to pay for the consequences of my irresponsibility."

[Cultural Jihad]

The guy was behind on his child support payments.

There's a spin if ever there was one. We heard the same whine last week when poor Don Matthews was killed "merely for speeding."

From the actual news article: "Morales had appeared on "America's Most Wanted" in connection with the attempted slaying of five deputy sheriffs in Pennsylvania who tried to arrest him on accusations of failing to pay child support."

[RogerFGay]

The cause of abandoned children is not Congress or laws or government. The cause of abandoned children are the parents who abandon or renounce them.

If you want the subject to be "abandoned children" we'll be off on another track. But I have the feeling that you're inventing your own world. You'll be able to logically prove anything you want to in your imaginary world.

If you don't like child support laws then you should work to make people more personally responsible for their actions.

I am. The only way to do that is to remove government control far enough that people are able to make their own decisions and act on them without shooting a lot of policemen first.

Here is the moral-liberal dictum: "Allow me to be irresponsible, and in return I'll allow you all to pay for the consequences of my irresponsibility."

You're trying to start that argument with the wrong person. Maybe you can find the right target at TurnLeft.com