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With the hearing underway underway on J.A.I.L.’s objection to the Attorney General’s ballot explanation on Amendment E, it may be an appropriate time to actually look at two documents signed by South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in-Chief Bill Stegmeier.
The lawsuit being heard by Judge Gors was started by an affidavit signed by Stegmeier. An affidavit “is a written declaration under oath.” We all know what an oath is — swearing to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” So, appearing below is most of Paragraph 5 of the affidavit and Stegmeier’s signature on it.
Paragraph 5 is the heart of the lawsuit, objecting to the explanation’s statement that Amendment E will apply to school boards, city councils, county commissions and similar public entities. That, Stegmeier swears under oath, is “purely political opinion” and must be deleted from the explanation. (Recall also that in his earlier letter to the AG, Stegmeier said that statement was an “invention” of the amendment’s opponents.)
Yet in December 2005 Stegmeier signed the following mailer to Madison area residents seeking to rebut an editorial written by Keith Jensen of the Madison Daily Leader (address, phone number and e-mail information redacted):
Let’s look at what he said about the editorial’s statement that J.A.I.L. applies to more than judges (black line indicates where material was removed):
That’s right. He said Jensen was “stating the truth” in saying J.A.I.L. applied to “every school board, city council, county commission, professional licensing board, in fact every citizen board in the state exercising quasi-judicial powers.” That seems to be completely contrary to what Stegmeier now says some eight months later.
Yet doesn’t that beg a question even bigger than J.A.I.L.’s continuing lack of candor? Since Stegmeier claims to have “authored” Amendment E, is his affidavit false or does the Madison mailer make him guilty of printing, publishing or delivering a document giving false and misleading information to voters?
It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
Aeschylus
“It’s really a very interesting time.”
So a geophysicist from the University of Alaska tells Elizabeth Kolbert as she visits his study of the permafrost in Alaska. That “interesting time” is the global warming taking place on the planet.
Kolbert expanded a three-part series she wrote for New Yorker magazine into Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a highly readable and informative account of the causes of global warming, its implications and the problems in dealing with it. Field notes is an appropriate description. Kolbert isn’t an author who sits at her desk, searching for information on the internet and doing telephone interviews. She takes the reader with her not only to the Alaska permafrost studies but to the ice pack in Greenland, glaciers in Iceland, butterfly studies near Yorkshire, England, and canals in the Netherlands built to reclaim land, as well as conferences on global warming and political offices.
Along the way, Kolbert translates what could be some difficult ideas for those of us who are science-impaired into understandable yet disconcerting prose. She examines not only the science but the practicalities of the science. For example, she notes that if significant portions of the Alaskan permafrost melt, as it appears it may, it will be the first time in more than 120,000 years. Similarly, she notes that a few years ago Canadian Inuits living about 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle saw robins. The rarity of the experience is reflected in the fact that there is no word for the bird in the language of the Inuits in that region.
Yet what is perhaps most frightening about Field Notes is its discussion of the delayed effects of global warming. In 1981, a leading earth scientist predicted that “carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise of natural climate variability” around the year 2000. If anything, that prediction came true earlier. What we now see in terms of the impact of global warning stems from actions and events some 20 years ago. More important, Kolbert notes, “This means that even if carbon dioxide were to remain stable at today’s levels, temperatures would still continue to rise, glaciers to melt, and weather patterns to change for decades to come.” The synergistic interplay among the various effects further compound the potential ramifications.
The fact is, though, that carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gases are not going to be stable, let alone drop significantly. Even conservative, midrange estimates predict global carbon dioxide emissions will grow from 7 million metric tons in 2005 to 10.5 billion metric tons by 2029. In fact, as Kolbert details in examining the debate surrounding the Kyoto Protocol to reduce those emissions, even that effort does not prevent increases in the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.
While it seems that virtually all scientists agree that global warming is occurring, the battleground, at least as framed by the United States and various corporations, is whether it is just a natural cyclic effect or the result of man’s activities. The frustration of those possessing the latter view is seen in Kolbert’s interview with a U.S. undersecretary of state responsible for explaining the Bush Administration’s position on global warming.
At one point, I asked the undersecretary if there were any circumstances under which the administration would accede to mandatory caps on emissions. “Our approach has been predicated on: we act, we learn, we act again,” she said. In response to a question about how urgent the problem of stabilizing emissions was, she replied, “We act, we learn, we act again,” and in response to a question about what would constitute a “dangerous” level of [carbon dioxide] in the atmosphere, she said, “Forgive me, I’m going to repeat myself: we act, we learn, we act again.”
Thus, if mankind is in fact causing or accelerating climate change, current policy appears to ignore the fact that results lag far behind our actions. Thus, continued inaction compounds and extends the ramifications.
Admittedly, the long-range effects of global warming are merely predictions based on climate models dependent upon innumerable variables. Still, Kolbert provides us with excellent field notes from her exploration of a potential catastrophe. While we can hope the models and predictions are wrong, neither she nor anyone else can assure us that a catastrophe can be averted.
People are always imagining new ways to live, and then figuring out ways to remake the world to suit what they’ve imagined.
Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Prior to the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum published a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen. More than 100 years later, his descendants are coming to South Dakota to apologize for editorials he wrote just before and after the Wounded Knee massacre calling for the extermination of the Lakota Sioux.
Baum published the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer from January 1890 to March 1891. On December 20, 1890, Baum wrote an editorial about the recent death of Sitting Bull. After noting Sitting Bull was the “most renowned Sioux of modern history,” Baum opined:
With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.
Nine days later, troops from the U.S. Seventh Cavalry opened fire on a group of captured Sioux near Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. At least 150 Sioux were killed (some estimates are higher), most of them women, children and unarmed men. Twenty-five cavalry soldiers also died.
Within the week, Baum published another editorial, saying that what occurred at Wounded Knee “resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers” and was “a disgrace to the war department.” He then wrote,
The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.
Baum eventually left Aberdeen and went on to write his Oz books. Although his editorials reflected the racial outlook of the time, they remain sore spots in the history of race relations in South Dakota. Some even began efforts seeking an apology from the planners of an annual “Oz Festival” in Aberdeen.
Now, South Dakota Public Broadcasting reports that some of Baum’s descendants are in South Dakota to help reconciliation. Some family members told SDPB that journalists of the time helped create some of the problems that led to Wounded Knee. They felt it important to continue to look at those issues today and plan to apologize to the Wounded Knee Survivors Association. An association mermber told SDPB that the apology would be a historic event.
UPDATE: An expanded version of the SDPB story was broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition on August 17.
I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy.
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Proponents of the J.A.I.L. measure, also known as Amendment E, have filed suit challenging portions of the Attorney General’s ballot explanation of the amendment. The claim, made in a sworn pleading signed by South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in-Chief Bill Stegmeier, is not as broad-based as complaints raised in an earlier letter to AG Larry Long but does rely on claims made in that letter.
The lawsuit alleges two parts of the explanation exceed the authority of both Long and Secretary of State Chris Nelson, the two defendants named in the litigation. Specifically, the lawsuit objects to these two sentences:
Citizens serving on juries, school boards, city councils, county commissions, or in similar capacities, and prosecutors and judges, are all required to make judicial decisions.The proposed amendment to the State Constitution would allow thirteen volunteers to expose these decision makers to fines and jail, and strip them of public insurance coverage and up to one-half of their retirement benefits, for making decisions which break rules defined by the volunteers.
According to Stegmeier’s application, these sentences are not a “clear and simple recitation of the effect of a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ vote” and do not “state succinctly the purpose and legal effect of the proposed initiated measure.” Instead, Stegmeier says, the explanation “contains a purely political opinion and a deliberate attempt to convince the people of South Dakota to vote against Amendment E.” The AG cannot express beliefs as to the consequences of adoption of a ballot measure, only state its legal effect, according to the application.
I’ve previously stated my views on the ballot explanation and won’t repeat them now. I do want to make a couple points, though.
First, it was probably wise for Stegmeier and the J.A.I.L.ers to narrow the focus of their complaints. Given the length of time between now and the election, I think they need to present what they believe are their best arguments and not dilute them with the shotgun approach taken in their letter to Long, which included arguments that the doctrine of judicial immunity is itself unconstitutional.
As for “best arguments,” I still see the claim regarding the first sentence as a loser. Established legal precedent makes clear that the entities J.A.I.L. now asserts (contrary to prior statements) are not included within the amendment’s scope do exercise judicial functions at times and, thus, are entitled to claim judicial immunity for those actions. That brings them within the scope of the amendment as written. At the same time, I previously noted that the term “volunteers” might be pushing the envelope. It will be interesting to see to the extent to which Judge Gors, who is assigned the case, believes a judge or court must or can sit as a copy editor for the choice of words in a ballot explanation.
Finally, the South Dakota Supreme Court has said the legal effect of a proposed measure means the result the proposal “will have upon existing law” but not “collateral, theoretical or potential consequences which may or may not occur.” I think Judge Gors will have an interesting task parsing the language to determine if it states the “legal effect” of the amendment or consequences that may or may not occur.
Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.
Socrates (attributed)
Too many interesting things popping up so an early installment of linkage:
The spectators laughed. And my lawyer, rolling up one of his sleeves, said with finality, “Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true and nothing is true!”
Albert Camus, The Stranger
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