King's Corner

The Fully Informed Jury Association’s Web site starts with this quote (as of today):

The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by government.

The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict.

You’ll find a library of information, including legal precedents and links to other sites on the concept of jury nullification. It sounds dry, and it can be, but on the other hand, it’s also solid, and has the potential to empower average citizens.

When we teach speech students about evaluating sources, we usually tell them that government figures are more reliable than others. We teach journalism students the same thing. Maybe the operative word here is “more” and “than others.”

The greater lesson, perhaps, is to be skeptical of anything that any source tells you until you see the original data and understand how it was gathered and what it means.

As FOXNews reports in The Myth of 90 Percent, a “fact” that has been floated around by a whole bunch of government officials and passed on uncritically by a number of media outlets is just flat wrong, i.e., the “fact” that 90% of the guns used in Mexican crime comes from the United States.

It’s not just a little wrong. It’s a lot wrong. A more accurate way to look at the facts is this: about 17% of recovered weapons used in a crime in Mexico could be traced to the U.S. (Continued)

You may think at first glance this post is about politics. It’s not. It’s about communication. It’s about how a garbled message leads to inaccurate results. It’s interesting to think about both the bailouts of the Bush administration and the Obama administration, as well as the cranking up of the Treasury printing presses, as noise in the channel.

John Stossel may make too much sense in his post “Government Sets Us Up for the Next Bust.” But it’s worth reading it all the way through.

Just for some basic background, here’s a post entitled “Does Government Spending Bring Prosperity?” Prof. Greaves may have written it in 1975, but its truths still hold today.

…expect people to use it. I’m not completely sure where this falls in our categories, but I’m sure it has something to do with communication:

See more pwn and owned pictures.

Thanks to Bryan Booth for the heads-up on this one.

At the same time, I found a great example of unintended messages: