The Great Real Estate Question

Hypothetical: A smiling, very pretty little real estate agent shows a house to a newly-married couple. It is well-constructed. The major components -- roof, windows, furnace, air-conditioner -- are recently installed and ship-shape and so won't need replacing for decades. It is in a good neighborhood. The husband says, "Wow! What a deal! Why such a good price?"

"The widow who owned it had to move," the real estate agent explains. "She asked me not to invade her privacy too much by explaining more than that to persons interested in buying her home."

"Well, tell her that we'll take it!," the wife declares, smiling. "Where can we sign on the dotted line?"

A month-and-a-half later, closing occurs. An attorney appears for the widow, and signs for her under the authority of a Power of Attorney. 90% of the purchase price is mortgaged. The newlyweds are locked-in to 30 years of debt, but they are happy with their new home.

After they have moved-in, they hear knocking in the walls at night, they feel clouds of cold here and there in the house, they hear footsteps on the floors, and they are constantly awakened by tapping on their hips at night.

After a few weeks, a neighbor tells the disturbed couple, "Wow, we thought that this house could not possibly sell! And why do you both have such deep, dark circles under your eyes?"

"Why didn't you think that anyone would buy the house?," asks the wife.

"Oh, because of the double murder there last year! The wife murdered her unfaithful husband, and then she murdered her own son when he tried to stop her from murdering her husband! She was taken away in handcuffs by police, and is still awaiting trial! Ever since then, this place has been outrageously haunted! Even the police are afraid to go in! If you ask me, the market value of that house is about 2 cents!"

Shocked, the couple rush over to the real estate agent's office, and say, "You defrauded us! You know that we would never have bought this house had we known that there was a double murder, there! Who will ever buy it from us? And the murders left behind ghosts! We can't sleep there at night! The ghosts won't let us rest! It's terrifying, there!"

"So sue me!," answers the real estate agent. "I told you what I could! I called the seller a 'widow' and I said that she 'had to move.' She did, when they cuffed her! And then I resorted to the right of privacy. That should have been enough to tip you off! We have a duty to our clients, and this particular client insisted that the embarrassing accusations against her -- and they are ONLY 'accusations'; she's presumed innocent until proven guilty, right? -- be kept private! Do YOU have constitutional rights? Well, SHE DOES, TOO! And besides that, you don't REALLY believe in GHOSTS, do you?"

And the real estate agent drives to the bank and deposits her commission check, smiling.

Fraud?

What Is Free Speech?

Hypothetical: You have an 18 year old Catholic son. He volunteers, and gets shipped out to Afghanistan. There, he befriends local Muslims, and one night, while reading a storybook to a group of laughing Muslim children through a translator, a suicide bomber jumps into the room where this is going on. As the suicide bomber tries to let go of his spring-loaded dead man switch, your son grips the switch and wrestles the bomber out the door into a pit outside, where the bomb goes off, killing your son.

Muslims, fellow soldiers, nation and family all mourn the tragic loss of your son.

You greet the C-5A bearing your son's body at Dover AFB, and then make funeral arrangements.

The next day, Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas has protestors outside the New Jersey Catholic Church where the funeral is about to take place. Their signs say, "Does a soul belonging to a faggot-protecting religion go to Heaven?" "He fought and died for an Army which protects faggots. He's Hell-bound." "He died giving aid and comfort to members of the same religion which burned our families alive in the Twin Towers."

When you see the signs as you walk into Church, you collapse to the ground in tears.

Are the protestors engaging in Constitutionally-protected free speech?

Are Federal and State Political and Judicial Leaders Guilty of Conspiracy to Rape?

The title of this post is not a joke. It is a serious question.

Suppose I have a jail filled with reports of homosexual rape. Correctional officers hear screams in a cell, run to it, and there they see two thug inmates holding down an inmate while a third thug inmate shoves his X into the held-down inmate's Y and Z. Let's say that there are hundreds of cases of this every year in the jail, and report after report after report is filed, detailing witnessed homosexual rapes. A raw count verifies that one out of three inmates get it by force in the Y and Z.

Let's say that this goes on in jails across each state, in every state in the United States.

But no one ever fixes the problem, because fixing the problems of bad guys is politically unpopular.

Instead, the phenomenon is used by cops as a weapon of terror during arrest -- "I hope that you have some Vaseline with you, Fred, because you're going to need it, where you're going!" (I actually heard a sergeant-at-arms say that once in court to a newly-convicted defendant.) And Gary Sinise taunts fictionalized defendants with that line in "CSI New York."

In one of my cases, years ago, the defendant was this wonderful, innocent visitor from Somalia with no criminal record at all who was driving down Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia when a speeding car coming in from the right went through a red light and slammed into the Somali's car, spinning it around, and damaging the Somali's accelerator so that it was locked at the speed the Somali had been traveling. The Somali national screamed helplessly as his car, brakes smoking, sped into a crowd of churchgoers, injuring 6, including a man whose two legs had to be amputated. While the emotionally crushed, traumatized Somali jabbered at police in the Somali language, the white guy who really caused the accident calmly told police that HE had had the green light. African American police assumed that the white guy was telling the truth, did no search for witnesses, and had the Somali incarcerated, awaiting trial, under $50,000 bail. (I later found a group of 5 witnesses sitting on a local tavern's steps who saw the accident, who took bets that the innocent black guy got arrested.)

The Detention Center was overcrowded that day, so they put the Somali in Holmesburg Prison (still open, then) where he was held-down and forcibly raped again and again and again.

So, it happens. In this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer the editorial, headlined "Prison equals rape," discusses this problem. It notes that the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 88,500 prisoners in federal and state prison were raped by homosexual inmates or guards in the last 12 months.

Suppose I run a nursing home that really is the last stop before the funeral home for 99% of the patients.

And suppose I, the owner, am fully aware that the place is a Bedlam of homosexual rape, ultimately for about one-third of the patients.

But I do NOTHING to solve the problem, but smilingly tease the new patients, after their families leave, with the words, "I hope you brought Vaseline, Joe!"

Aren't I GENUINELY guilty of the crime of Conspiracy to Rape, and shouldn't I GENUINELY go to prison for the rest of my life, if my actions (keeping the place open) and inaction (doing nothing to stop the rapes) causes helpless screaming patient after helpless screaming patient -- HUNDREDS -- to be relentlessly raped, again and again and again.

I have long believed that every judge who knowingly sentences inmates to such places, and every prosecutor who knowingly tries to put inmates in such places, and every governor and mayor and correctional officer who jokingly tolerates the problem, is guilty of Conspiracy to Rape, and should be tried, convicted, and imprisoned.