He makes severe criticisms of  presidents such as Lincoln, which is something we rarely see in this country.  In his view, states do have a right to secede, and Lincoln should have let them do so.  He thinks that slavery would soon have disappeared anyway, as it did almost everywhere else, and likely many if not all the secessionist states would have returned.  Sometimes I also think that might have been better, even if they had not returned to the union.

He considers FDR to be the chief anti-constitutionalist up until George W. Bush, for whom he saves his greatest condemnation for having essentially done away with the 4th Amendment through the misnamed USA Patriot Act.  It was interesting to learn that the FBI is not just using their ability to write their own warrants in terrorism cases, but also in drug cases and others.  They can search people’s library records, medical files, financial records, etc., without a judge ever issuing a single warrant and it is furthermore against the law for the bank, library, or physician who is served with the warrant to tell anyone at all that this has been done.  Not only has Obama ruled out trials for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of that gang for the treason they committed in violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution, but he signed a one year extension of the Patriot Act in February, 2010.

I believe that the Founding Fathers had the citizens in mind when writing the Second Amendment.  They didn’t want a feudal system where arms were controlled by the king and a few lords.  They wanted a “militia” made up of every citizen.  The right to bear arms, though, was not conceived as a right of the states, as some have mistakenly claimed, but of every citizen.

In the 14th Amendment, the authors forbade the states from interfering with the right to bear arms.  They did this because they wanted freed slaves and union loyalists to be able to defend themselves against the likes of the KKK and the confederate veterans in the South who swore to prevent them from exercising their rights.  Due to poor court decisions in the 1870s, this purpose was thwarted, unfortunately.

I note that Ron Paul was about the only Republican applauding Steele.

I certainly agree that the brain of the psychopath is different than “normals.”  This is being researched primarily using criminal inmate populations and functional MRI scanning.  [Of course, most psychopaths are not inmates of prisons.  Many are very successful and powerful people in this world.  But these are not likely to submit to having their brains scanned and being unmasked as a person lacking in empathy and without conscience.]  What I don’t agree to is the conclusion that therefore they should be shown mercy for their crimes.  If anything, knowing someone had a brain that rendered them likely to commit crimes and knowing there is no effective way of changing that would make me want to keep them locked up permanently if there was any way of doing so.  The Tennessee jury took a psychopath who had murdered his wife’s friend and cut his wife severely with a machete and convicted him of manslaughter rather than murder because the defense convinced them he wasn’t fully culpable.  What a mistake!  The judge tried to rectify it by giving him 32 years.  Hopefully, he won’t get parole or outlive his sentence.

What is the purpose of the sentence given by a court?  It could have various purposes:

(1) Retribution or vengeance.  While this sounds primitive, it does serve a function for the victim or families of the victim.  There seems to be an instinctive need for this in many if not most people, without which they will feel justice has not been done, or even attempt to take their own revenge.  Perhaps if the victim accepts that the perpetrator was not acting completely freely it would mitigate this need somewhat.  But perhaps not.

(2) Giving the perpetrator punishment they deserve.  To say that the psychopath doesn’t deserve the punishment because of their nature would then seem to imply that other criminals who aren’t psychopaths are acting freely and DO deserve it.  I think few neuroscientists would support the view that anyone is a free agent, undetermined by his genetic makeup or his environment.  So I think it is problematic to determine what is free and what is determined and what anyone deserves and this should not be a factor in sentencing.

(3) “Correction.”  This is often the official name of the prisons department.  Sometimes this might work in the case of non-psychopaths, but we have no evidence that the psychopath can be corrected by any means.

(4) Deterrence.  Psychopaths can be deterred by threat of punishment just as other criminals can.  Psychopaths however have another characteristic: that of risk taking.  That makes them less likely to be deterred than the run of the mill criminal.

(5) Removing the perpetrator from the society.  If someone is likely to produce more victims, the last thing we want is to return them to the society where they are able to commit more murders or other crimes.  This would argue for more severe, or even life sentences for persons found to have the brain pattern of psychopathy.  One could make the argument even for the death penalty, since a psychopath in prison can make victims of the other inmates.  To me, this fifth point is the main purpose of judicial punishment.

I used as a guide, Bill Sullivan’s 100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon & Southwest Washington. I have found Bill’s guides to be the most reliable of the many guides available.  He also has a web page for this hike.

It was a cloudy, misty day, which made for better waterfall photos, since if the sun is on the falls, the highlights are likely to get blown out (although you may get a rainbow if you are lucky).  It also keeps the number of people down on this popular hike.  The hike starts on Old Maid Flats, which was created at the time of the last eruption of Mt. Hood.  Lava melted some of Sandy Glacier, sending a lahar down the Sandy River, flattening the forest (see Ellen Bishop’s Hiking Oregon’s Geology.)  This happened just before the visit of Lewis & Clark to the region.

Ramona Falls Trailhead

The trail follows the Sandy River upstream on the right bank until a seasonal footbridge is reached, whereupon the trail crosses to the left bank.

Sandy River footbridge

As shown in Sullivan’s map, the hike can be done as a loop.  I took the equestrian trail up the left bank of the Sandy and then cut over to the falls, saving the prettier Ramona Creek walk for the return.

Ramona Falls

The trail back along Ramona Creek is one of the best creek walks in the Mt. Hood forest.

Ramona Creek